When your bootstraps are not enough: How demand and supply interact to generate learning in settings of extreme poverty

How much does family demand matter for child learning in contexts of extreme poverty? In rural Gambia, families with high aspirations for their children's future education and career, measured before children start school, go on to invest substantially more than other families in their children’s education. Despite this, essentially no children are literate or numerate three years later. When villages receive a highly-impactful, teacher-focused supply-side intervention, however, children of these families are 25 percent more likely to achieve literacy and numeracy than other children in the same village. Furthermore, improved supply enables these children to acquire other higher-level skills necessary for later learning and child development. In such settings, greater demand can map onto developmentally meaningful learning differences, but only with adequate complementary inputs.