Schooling and Parental Death

Paul Gertler, David Levine and Minnie Ames

Center for International and Development Economics Research, Working Paper Series from Center for International and Development Economics Research, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley

Abstract: Loss of a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can face. If loss of a parent reduces investments in children, it can also have long-lasting implications. This study uses parametric and semi-nonparametric matching techniques to estimate how one human capital investment, school enrollment, is affected by a parent's recent death. We analyze data from 600,000 households from Indonesia’s National Socioeconomic Survey (SUSENAS) during 1994-96. We find a parent's recent death has a large effect on a child's enrollment. We also use this shock to test several theories of intra-household allocation and find little differential treatment based on the gender of the child or the deceased parent.

Keywords: education; human capital; mortality; Intrahousehold allocation; Indonesia; son preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-02-04
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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