Orphans and schooling in Africa: a longitudinal analysis

Area of Science:

• Health Economics
• Development Economics
• Human Capital Studies

Background:

• AIDS deaths can impede economic development by impacting future human capital.
• Understanding the educational consequences of parental mortality is crucial for vulnerable populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the effect of parental death on primary school participation in Kenya.
• To investigate differential impacts based on the deceased parent and child's academic standing.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a unique five-year panel dataset of over 20,000 Kenyan children.
• Employed fixed-effects models to control for unobserved child-specific characteristics.
• Analyzed the timing of school participation changes relative to parental death.

Main Results:

• Parental death leads to a substantial decrease in primary school participation.
• A smaller, significant drop in participation occurs before parental death, linked to morbidity.
• Impacts are more pronounced when mothers die and for children with lower baseline academic performance.
• Cross-sectional data estimates are biased towards zero compared to panel data analysis.

Conclusions:

• Parental mortality, particularly from AIDS, has severe negative consequences for children's education in Kenya.
• Targeted support for academically vulnerable children and those losing mothers is essential.
• Longitudinal data is critical for accurately assessing the educational impact of such events.