Child Schooling in Ethiopia: The Role of Maternal Autonomy

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of maternal autonomy on child schooling outcomes in Ethiopia using a nationally representative Ethiopian Demographic and Health survey for 2011. The empirical strategy uses a Hurdle Negative Binomial Regression model to estimate years of schooling. An ordered probit model is also estimated to examine age grade distortion using a trichotomous dependent variable that captures three states of child schooling. The large sample size and the range of questions available in this dataset allow us to explore the influence of individual and household level social, economic and cultural factors on child schooling. The analysis finds statistically significant effects of maternal autonomy variables on child schooling in Ethiopia. The roles of maternal autonomy and other household-level factors on child schooling are important issues in Ethiopia, where health and education outcomes are poor for large segments of the population.

Participation in microfinance based Self Help Groups in India: Who becomes a member and for how long?

“…Summary statistics on the duration of membership revealed that the sample variance [ 31 ] is much greater than the mean value [ 21 ], which is an indication of over-dispersion in the data. In such instances, the negative binomial regression procedure, which is designed to handle such extra Poisson variations, would be more appropriate as it produces more valid estimates and best model fit [ 29 ].…”

“…More specifically, the model allowed for the decision to join a SHG group to be treated independently from the decision to continue membership (duration) in one integrated model. The negative binomial hurdle model is appropriate for count outcomes with underlying data overdispersion, as observed in this sample [29][30][31][32]. The hurdle addresses the excess zeroes found in this data representing non-members as well as members with less than one-month membership duration, both coded as zero (duration = 0).…”

Maternal autonomy and birth registration in India: Who gets counted?

“…However, women continue to have little household decision-making authority in many developing countries including India. Improvements in maternal socio-economic status have been strongly linked in the literature to better educational and demographic outcomes, improved child welfare and allocation of household resources in favour of children’ [ 14 – 18 ]. UNICEF (2013) [ 2 ] notes that mothers with some schooling are more likely to know how to register a child than their uneducated peers.…”

Public Health Insurance and Maternal Health Care Utilization in India: Evidence from a 2005-2012 Mothers’ Cohort Study

“…Another objective of the paper was to investigate the relationship between maternal and child health care utilization and empowerment of women. The wider literature showed that giving women more decisionmaking power in the household leads to better educational and health outcomes for children since women have been shown to allocate more household resources towards children [26][27][28][29][30][31]. Similarly, we would expect empowered women to utilize more MCH services given their role as primary caregivers of children.…”