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help for mol                                                 Joao Pedro Azevedo
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Measures of Effective Literacy

        mol varlist [weight] [if exp] [in range] , house(varname) [
               format(%fmt) by(varname) rank gen ]

aweights and fweights are allowed; see help weights.



Description

A country's overall level of literacy is usually measured by taking the number
of adults who are literate as a percentage of the total number of adults - the
so-called literacy rate. Following Sen (1985) there has been increased use of
the literacy rate and other social indicators to evaluate the overall standard
of living in a country.

mol implements an alternative aproaches to evaluate the aggregate literacy
level in a country or region or any type of group. The resulting 'effective
literacy' proposed by Basu and Foster (1998). This measure takes into account
the intrahousehold externality arising from the presence of a literate member
in the household. The extensions proposed by Subramanian (2004) are also
implemented.



Option

by(housevar) indicates the variable that will be used to identify the members
    of a given household.

by(groupvar) repeats the command for each group of observations for which the
    values of the variables in varlist are the same. Groupvar must be an
    integer variable.

alpha(number) specifies the sensitivity alpha used. Alpha is contained within
    the interval [0,1]. If alpha is omited, only the houseshould effective
    literacy is calculated.  Multiple alphas are allowed to be calculated at
    once.

rank returns the rank of different groups according to each indicator.

gen generates tree new variables in the dataset with the output of the
    exercise.

format(%fmt) specifies the format to be used to display the estimated
    inequality indices. The default is to use a %6.5f format.



Output Variables

     R :  'Crude' Literacy Rate .
     Re :  Effective Literacy [alpha = hous. lit. rate].
     (1-I):  Isolated Rate of Literacy (1-I).
     I :  Isolated Rate of Illiteracy (1-I).
     Q :  Efficiency Loss. Q is contained within the interval [0,1]: Q= 0 when
    I = 0, and Q= 1 when I=1R (which, of course, is the maximum value I can
    attain, corresponding to a situation in which all illiterates are isolated
    illiterates).
     R* :  Externality-adjusted Literacy Rate (Subramanian, 2004).



Saved Results

     mol returns results in r() format.



Example

        . mol alfab [fw= weight], house(domicilio)

        . mol alfab [fw= weight], house(domicilio) alpha(.2 .5 .8)

        . mol alfab [fw= weight], house(domicilio) by(region) gen

        . mol alfab [fw= weight], house(domicilio) by(state) rank

        . mol alfab [fw= weight], house(domicilio) by(gender) alpha(.2)

        . mol alfab [fw= weight], house(domicilio) by(gender) alpha(.2 .5 .8)



Reference

     Basu, Kaushik and Foster, James E. (1998) On measuring literacy. Economic
          Journal, vol.108, no.451, Nov., pp.1733-1749.

     Sen, A. (1985), Commodities and Capability. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

     Subramanian, S (2004) Measuring literacy: some extensions of the
          Basu-Foster framework.  Journal of Development Economics, vol.73,
          pp453-463.



Author

     Joao Pedro Azevedo
     jazevedo@worldbank.org
     World Bank



Also see

    Manual:  [R] lorenz
    Online:  help for alorenz; apoverty; changemean (if installed).



Acknowledgements

    The financial support of UNESCO is gratefully acknowledge.
 
    The usual disclaimer applies.