The paper investigates two issues regarding household expenditure on primary education of own children using the Second Malawi Integrated Household Survey(IHS2) data. Firstly, we look at factors which infuence a household's decision to spend or not (the participation decision), and by how much (the expenditure decision). This is done for urban and rural households. We find that there are differences in the factors which influence both decision levels for the two groups of households. Secondly, to get a deeper understanding of these rural-urban spending differences, the study develops the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique for the independent Double Hurdle model. The proposed decomposition is done at the aggregate and disaggregated levels. The aggregated decomposition allows us to isolate the expenditure differences into a part attributable to differences in characteristics and a part which is due to differences in coefficients. The detailed (disaggregated) decomposition enables us to pinpoint the major factors behind the spending gap. At the aggregate decomposition level, our results show that at least 66% of the expenditure differential is explained by differences in characteristics between rural and urban households, implying that an equalization of household characteristics would lead to about 66% of the spending gap disappearing. At the disaggregated decomposition level, the rural-urban difference in household income is found to be the largest contributor to the spending gap, followed by quality of access of primary schools. Besides, rural-urban di¤erences in mothers education and employment are found to contribute more to the spending differential relative to the same for fathers.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
16090.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Gary S. Becker & Nigel Tomes, 1994.
"X. Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd Edition), pages 257-298
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
Behrman, Jere R & Pollak, Robert A & Taubman, Paul, 1986.
"Do Parents Favor Boys?,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 27(1), pages 33-54, February.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)