While there is a very large literature on what determines child schooling in developing
countries, much of it has ignored income differences in the demand for schooling. This is surprising
in view of the empirical fact, observed in most developing countries, that there are large differences
in enrollment rates across income groups. A priori one would expect not only the levels of school
enrollment but also the marginal effects of factors such as household income, number of siblings,
and community schooling infrastructure on school enrollments to vary systematically across income
groups. Two additional shortcomings of the existing literature on schooling are that (i) generally few
studies have analyzed the determinants of both school enrollment (quantity) and household schooling
expenditures per pupil (quality), and (ii) there have been limited efforts at identifying the effects of
school facilities and teacher-pupil ratios on school enrollments and household expenditures on
schooling.1
All of these are important policy issues. For instance, the merits of expanding the
quantity of schooling (say, by increasing the number of school facilities) as opposed to the quality
of schooling (say, by increasing the teacher-pupil ratio)2
are widely debated in policy circles in most
developing countries. Unfortunately, these debates are usually not based on any information about
how the two sets of policies might differentially affect the schooling outcomes of children from lowversus
high-income backgrounds.
This paper has three distinct objectives. First, it attempts to estimate the joint demand for
primary school enrollment and schooling expenditures per pupil (which I treat as a measure of
schooling quality), using data from Kenya. Second, the paper estimates the differing impacts of
additional school facilities and teacher-pupil ratios on the household demand for primary schooling.
Third and finally, the paper explores the possibility of systematic income differences in the
parameters of the schooling demand relations.