Structural changes in African households: Female-headed households and Children's educational investments in an imperfect credit market in Africa

Edward Asiedu, Amin Karimu and Abdul Ganiyu Iddrisu

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2024, vol. 68, issue C, 30-42

Abstract: Female headship of households has increased significantly around the world. This paper establishes a link between gender, income, and children's educational investments in an imperfect credit market. We show using a representative household survey from Ghana that, even though there is a positive correlation between income and educational investments, there are expected and unexpected heterogeneities in income and children's educational investments. We find that, whereas income levels for male-headed households with children 6 to 18 years are over 20% higher, female-headed households tend to invest 31% to 38% more on children's education than male-headed households. In imperfect credit markets, higher educational investments could be taking place at the expense of other household outcomes such as food/leisure. Our empirical results show the need for different interventions for different households. We also show how institutional changes that recognize affirmative action can interact with household-level structural changes.

Keywords: Female-headed households; Educational investment; Imperfect credit markets; Structural change in households; Affirmative action, Ghana (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 I25 I30 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:streco:v:68:y:2024:i:c:p:30-42

DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2023.09.008

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