Tuition fees and the intra-household allocation of schooling: Evidence from Uganda’s Free Primary Education reform

Many education policies in low income countries impose eligibility limits, and these can generate household responses that distribute educational investments across children. In this paper, I study the effects of eligibility limits in the context of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) reform in Uganda. The program abolished elementary school fees for up to four children per household, with families paying fees on each additional child. Depending on the composition of children and their age at the onset of the reform, the policy generates costs for primary school that vary both within and across households. Children that are eligible for the tuition waiver but live in households with ineligible siblings complete fewer years of schooling. I estimate that the presence of ineligible siblings wiped out almost half of the overall impact of the UPE reform on educational attainment, with the effects concentrated among the poorest households. Household responses to the subsidy program are similar to those found in other types of schooling programs such as conditional cash transfers.