Dynamics of demand for primary education in Rural Pakistan: comparison of estimates from 1991 and 2001-02 household data

Type Journal Article
Title Dynamics of demand for primary education in Rural Pakistan: comparison of estimates from 1991 and 2001-02 household data
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2006
Abstract
The objective of the paper is to document the dynamics of changes in attitude and decision – making for enrollment at the household level, during the period 1991 and 2001-02. This has been done by conducting an empirical analysis on the household data of 2001-02 and comparing it with Benchmark estimates from Sathar and Lloyd (1994) study on 1991 dataset. Due to absence of similar variables for urban areas in PIHS 2001-02, we just concentrate on modeling the enrollment decision making behaviour in rural areas. The paper concludes that, in case of primary school attendance, not only child’s age, number of siblings and parent’s education including fathers is more significant than in 1990s in explaining the probability of attendance, and their impact has increased in most cases. The gender differentials have also narrowed during the decade. The average age of females and males attending primary school has fallen by a year and ½ year respectively. The probability of girls in small farm households being sent to school instead of being involved in household chores or farm work has increased. Access to public school within 1 km has increased chance of attendance for girls by 50
percent during the decade. We also find similar strong evidence of reduced gender inequities at the household level in expenditure allocation. If father is literate the expenditure on girls is likely to be higher than on boys. But mother literacy favours higher expenditure on boys rather than girls. Considering provinces, in case of Punjab, the inequality in expenditure allocation have almost disappeared, while it is nearly 6 times in case of Sindh.

Related studies

»