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Income Shocks and Gender Gaps in Education: Evidence from Uganda

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Abstract

This paper uses exogenous variation in rainfall across districts in Uganda to estimate the causal effects of household income shocks to in children’s enrollment and cognitive skills conditional on gender. I find negative income shocks to have large negative and highly significant effects on female enrollment in primary schools and the effect grows stronger for older girls. The effect on boys’ enrollment is smaller and only marginally significant. Moreover, I find that a negative income shock has an adverse effect on test scores in general and test scores of female students in particular. The results imply that households respond to income shocks by varying the quantity and quality of girls’ education while boys are to a larger extent sheltered – a finding consistent with a model where parents’ values of child labor differ across sexes.

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  • Björkman, Martina, 2006. "Income Shocks and Gender Gaps in Education: Evidence from Uganda," Seminar Papers 744, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0744
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    3. Zimmermann, Laura V, 2012. "Remember When It Rained: The Elusiveness of Gender Discrimination in Indian School Enrollment," IZA Discussion Papers 6833, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rainfall; education; test scores; gender;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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