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SAGA Research Proposal:

1.2.1.1 Understanding Africa's Low Enrolments

Why don’t more African children go to school, and why is this problem more severe for girls than for boys? There are many possible answers, any or all of which would be appropriate sub-topics for research under this Cooperative Agreement. The oldest answer to the general enrolment question comes from an institutional perspective: there are simply not enough schools in Africa, and what schools there are not close enough to the widely dispersed, mostly rural population. Particularly at the secondary school level, neither the physical infrastructure nor staffing levels are sufficient. Another oft-cited problem is the low quality of education in Africa: schools lack supplies; infrastructure is not maintained; teachers are poorly trained, poorly paid, and lack motivation. Poor quality and low returns may cause parents to think that, while education in the abstract is a good idea, education at their school is not. Econometric studies of education demand (e.g., Glick and Sahn 2000) confirm that parents respond to poor school quality by not enrolling their children. In the labor market, new research indicates that the returns to schooling, especially primary schooling, have fallen in Africa (Moll 1996; Glewwe 1996), likely reflecting declines in school quality, among other factors.

In addition to these institutional constraints on the supply side, other research has found a variety of household and individual behavioral constraints that reduce enrolments from the demand side. From the perspective of economics, parents may find that the costs of schooling, both direct (fees, books, transport, etc) and opportunity costs (loss of the child’s labor input in home production, farm work, household enterprises, etc.) are too high (Assié-Lumumba 1993a; Bray and Lillis 1988). More subtly, even if parents believe that the benefits of schooling outweigh the costs, which virtually every study of the returns to education finds, the economic benefits come in the future when a child has begun to work, while the costs are incurred now. Families that are liquidity constrained may be unable to make a profitable investment in their children’s education. In theory, a well-functioning capital market could ease this constraint, but in practice, it is difficult to develop a long-term capital market where no collateral is available. This lack of access to an important market is an example of a constraint that prevents poor families from making bottom-up investments in education that would lead to faster growth and poverty reduction. To address this market failure, governments may want to subsidize the current costs of education by reducing fees or even providing negative fees, cash transfers to students' households, as in the Progresa project in Mexico (Schultz 2001), or in-kind transfers such as school uniforms in Kenya (Kremer, Moulin, Myatt, and Namunyu 1997). These transfer payments provide a powerful incentive for poor families to keep their children in school because current income is more valuable to families that are liquidity constrained.

From a sociological perspective, prevailing social norms may dictate that "appropriate" activities for children are other than schooling. Such constraints are often more severe for girls than for boys, because households’ demands on girls time (e.g., to do domestic chores or to care for younger siblings) are higher. In addition, social conceptions of the work that women do — trading, tending to farms, working at home, and caring for children — may lead parents to conclude that the benefits of education are less for their daughters than they are for their sons (Assié-Lumumba 1994a). In addition, Africa’s historical legacy established gender-specific patterns of schooling that are difficult to overcome (Assié-Lumumba 1997 and 1994b). Such gender-based restrictions on activities are clearly costly. A society that restricts the human capital accumulation of half its population can only grow half as fast as one that educates all its children. Therefore, special attention needs to be given to identifying creative ways to raise girls' schooling. Some such efforts, both from within and outside of Africa, warrant more careful study and experimentation. Special subsidies for families that send their girls to school may be effective (Sawada and Lokshin 2001). More flexible school schedules may allow girls to fulfill household obligations while also attending school (Assié-Lumumba 1997). Policies to encourage women’s employment as teachers may raise girls’ schooling, as there is some evidence that girls are more likely to stay in school if their teachers are women (King and Bellow 1991; Eddah Gachukia 1992).

An increasingly important issue in Africa concerns the norms for care of orphans. Because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Africa has a large and rapidly growing population of orphans. African extended families take in orphans with great flexibility (Ainsworth 1992), although there is some evidence that fostered children are less likely to attend school (Eloundou-Enyegue and daVanzo 1999). More importantly, the scale of the HIV/AIDS crisis may soon overwhelm the traditional extended family safety net for orphans, endangering not just their chances to attend school, but their very livelihoods. There is great scope for creative thinking about policies to assist families that are coping with the strains of educating orphaned children.

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