Adjusting Household Structure: School Enrollment Impacts of Child Fostering in Burkina Faso

Richard Akresh ()

No 28521, Center Discussion Papers from Yale University, Economic Growth Center

Abstract: Researchers claim that children growing up away from their biological parents may be at a disadvantage and have lower human capital investment. This paper measures the impact of child fostering on school enrollment and uses household and child fixed effects regressions to address the endogeneity of fostering. Data collection by the author involved tracking and interviewing the sending and receiving household participating in of foster children with their non-fostered biological siblings. Foster children are equally likely as their host siblings to be enrolled after fostering and are 3.6 percent more likely to be enrolled than their biological siblings. Relative to children from non-fostering households, host siblings, biological siblings, and foster children all experience increased enrollment after the fostering exchange, indicating fostering may help insulate poor households from adverse shocks. This Pareto improvement in schooling translates into a long-run improvement in educational and occupational attainment.

Keywords: Labor; and; Human; Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/28521/files/dp040897.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Adjusting Household Structure: School Enrollment Impacts of Child Fostering in Burkina Faso (2004)
Working Paper: Adjusting Household Structure: School Enrollment Impacts of Child Fostering in Burkina Faso (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:yaleeg:28521

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.28521

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