Poverty moderates the association between gender and school dropout in South African adolescents

Abstract

This study examined prospective associations between poverty, gender, and school dropout in a large community sample of South African adolescents (Baseline: n = 3515, Follow-up: n = 3401, 57% female, age range at baseline: 10-17 years, mean age at baseline = 13.45). School dropout was defined as being enrolled in school at baseline assessment but no longer enrolled in school at follow-up assessment. Poverty was measured at baseline assessment using an index of access to the eight highest socially-perceived necessities for South African children and adolescents. Demographic characteristics including child gender and age, province, and urban versus rural location were recorded at baseline assessment and controlled for in the analysis. As predicted, higher poverty scores (AOR = 2.01, p < .001) were associated with increased odds of school dropout one year later. Gender was not a significant predictor of school dropout (AOR = 1.56, p = .07) but did interact with poverty (AOR = 0.66, p = .04) in predicting school dropout. However, our initial hypothesis that the impact of poverty on school dropout would be stronger for girls than boys was not supported. Instead, results indicated that while girls were at elevated risk of school dropout at low and mean levels of poverty, at high levels of poverty this gender difference was no longer evident. Findings suggest that vulnerable boys should not be neglected in policies to improve retention in education in contexts of extreme poverty.

Which factors affect postpartum educational enrollment of adolescent mothers in South Africa? A latent class analysis

“…To date, very few studies have examined the associations between enrollment in education and non-individual level factors among adolescent mothers. This is despite ample evidence from low-and middle-income countries, including South Africa, indicating that school dropout and grade failure are associated with economic deprivation (Boyes et al, 2017;Fleisch et al, 2012;Flisher et al, 2010;Orkin et al, 2014;Watkins et al, 2014), violence exposure (Herrero Romero et al, 2021, and other school-access variables, such as the distance from school (Singh & Mukherjee, 2018). In addition, family-level variables, such as supportive parenting, has shown to buffer educational risks among children aged 7 to 13 (Sherr et al, 2016) and might protect adolescents against school delay in violence-affected environments (Herrero Romero et al, 2018).…”

The Long-Term Health and Human Capital Consequences of Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Birth to Thirty Cohort: Single, Cumulative, and Clustered Adversity

“…The South African schooling system is divided into four phases, with mandatory attendance in the first three quarters and an optional 4 th phase that results in graduation out of the school system [51]. Despite high rates of enrollment in both primary and secondary schooling [52], the rates of incompletion for the latter are alarmingly high, with between 50-60% of learners not completing their secondary schooling [53]. Rates of secondary school incompletion in the current sample are much lower (32.2%) than the national average (~50.0%), but follow the same trend of females more likely to complete than males [54].…”

A Social Ecological Modeled Explanation of the Resilience Processes of a Sample of Black Sesotho-Speaking Adolescents

“…The results showed a practically significant relationship of large effect between school attendance and the resilience process. The literature speaks to the high attrition rates of young people living in disadvantaged communities (i.e., in poverty) in Southern Africa (Boyes, Berg, & Cluver, 2017;Dieltiens & Meny-Gibert, 2012). Given that school attendance was integral to the resilience process of our Sesotho-speaking sample, teachers, principals, parents, and community members should preferably support adolescents to not become part of the attrition statistics.…”