Concealed Preferences: Parental Attitudes to Education and Enrolment Choice in Rural Ethiopia

Sharada Weir ()

Working Papers Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: Parental attitudes regarding the value of education may determine whether some, none or all school-aged children in a household are enrolled and how much formal education they will eventually complete. To the extent that attitudes are important and can be adequately measured, they should explain household demand for schooling in the absence of constraints. However, the attitudes which people express may be inconsistent with their behaviour when faced with schooling choices for their own children. If attitudes do not explain actual enrolment, the causes of this discrepancy must be addressed. This paper attempts to measure attitudes, explain their formation and investigate the role of attitudes in the allocation of human capital. Parental attitudes toward schooling are found generally to be favourable, and differences in attitudes help explain household enrolment decisions. However, attitudes alone cannot account for low enrolment in rural Ethiopia. High direct and opportunity costs of schooling also limit school participation in the face of credit constraints.

Keywords: EDUCATION; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; HUMAN RESOURCES (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 O15 D12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fth:oxesaf:2000-1

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publications Office Centre for the Study of African Economies Institute of Economics and Statistics University of Oxford St Cross Building Manor Road Oxford OX1 3UL
http://users.ox.ac.u ... s/workingp/main.html

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford
Address: Centre for the Study of African Economies Institute of Economics and Statistics University of Oxford St. Cross Building, Manor Road Oxford, OX1 3UL, UK.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Thomas Krichel ().