HIV/AIDS and Primary School Performance in Tanzania

Peter Wobst and Channing Arndt

No 25870, 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: We examine the performance of the primary school education system in Tanzania over the 1990s - a decade characterized by substantial AIDS deaths. Given the relatively robust correlation between educational attainment and productivity established in the literature in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, human capital accumulation through education forms a major component of development strategy. At the same time, AIDS poses clear threats to the goal of human capital accumulation through education. To assess performance of the primary school system, we estimate non-stationary education transition matrices using a minimum cross entropy approach at the national, sub-national, and regional levels for girls, boys, and all students. Results indicate a deterioration in primary school performance using enrollments in grade 7, the final year of primary school, as a metric. This deterioration in performance occurred despite increased real resource allocations to the public education system and positive, if only tepid, overall economic growth trends. We conclude that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has quite likely slowed human capital accumulation in Tanzania.

Keywords: Health Economics and Policy; Labor and Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/25870/files/cp03wo01.pdf (application/pdf)

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae03:25870

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.25870

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().