Orphanhood and schooling outcomes in Malawi.

As in many sub-Saharan countries, the issue of orphan care has risen to the top of the social protection agenda in Malawi, where the prevalence of orphaned children has dramatically increased because of early deaths of parents infected by the HIV/AIDS virus. According to the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (MPRSP) prepared by the Government of Malawi in 2002, HIV infection rates in the 15-49 age group was at around 15% nationally (GOM 2002). The paper reported that about 70,000 children become orphans every year, adding to the already large number of orphans, estimated at about 850,000.

Orphans are a vulnerable group in any socioeconomic. However, Subbarao and Coury 2004, p. 140) state that "erosion of human capital is probably the biggest risk orphans and vulnerable children face in much of Africa." This is a serious concern, as underinvestment in health and education not only leads to serious depravation and hardship for the child, but it also depresses their future lifetime incomes.

Using longitudinal data covering the years 2000-2004, this paper determines the effect of orphanhood on school attendance in rural Malawi. This is done by estimating probit equations that relate school attendance status of children in 2004 to children and household characteristics and previous grade-level achievement.

Relating Schooling Outcomes to Orphanhood

There are two main reasons to expect schooling outcomes of orphans to fall short of schooling outcomes of non-orphan children. First, death of a parent, especially the more significant income-earning parent, is likely to affect labor allocation within the household. Specifically, because education brings financial returns only in the distant future, increased poverty caused by the loss of current income may mean that future returns to schooling are discounted more heavily and, in turn, children are expected to work, both at home and outside the home, at an earlier age to meet current consumption needs.

Second, it is often hypothesized that orphans may be victims of discriminatory practices by the relatives to whom they are entrusted for care. Such relatives or other caregivers are not only less likely to be altruistically motivated to care for their orphan wards, they may also not "invest" in the child's education because of the expectation that future financial returns, unlike in the case of their own children, will not necessarily accrue to them.

Third, it is quite likely that the physical and psychological trauma associated with the death of a parent may affect performance at school, and this way, affect the decision to continue education. This kind of trauma may be especially severe for orphans who witnessed the physical and mental agony of their HIV/AIDS-infected parent/s. There is also the chance that such children face discriminatory practice at school, by teachers as well as by fellow students, and that this makes them more likely to drop out of school than the rest.

There is some empirical evidence to support the above hypotheses. For example, Case, Paxon, and Abledinger (2004) used Demography and Health Survey (DHS) data to examine school enrollment of children 14 years or younger in several sub-Saharan countries, including Malawi. Using DHS 2000 data in Malawi, they found that orphaned children were more likely not to be enrolled in school compared to non-orphans. However, the problem with their estimate is that it is based on a single cross-section, and therefore does not convey very accurate information on whether orphanhood itself affects schooling outcomes. This is because it could well be that many of the orphans had stopped going to school before the death of their parents. In fact, the likelihood of this happening would be greater for HIV/AIDS-infected parents who might have pulled their children out of school while they were still alive either because of reduced income or because of greater need to finance increased medical expenses.

For this reason, tracking education achievement over time is likely to provide a better understanding of orphans' schooling outcomes. It would be of interest, for example, to compare current school enrollment status of orphans with that of non-orphans who had similar levels of schooling achievement in the past. This is what we do here. Specifically, using panel data, we compare school enrollment of orphans versus non-orphans in 2004 controlling for their educational level in 2000.

Data Source

Our analysis of schooling outcomes is based on longitudinal information on school-age children from 534 rural households in Malawi. These households were surveyed in the Complementary Panel Survey (CPS) conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute in collaboration with the Center for Social Research, University of Malawi. The first round of the survey was completed in 2000 and the fifth round in 2004. Selection of households was done so as to maximize representativeness at the national level. In fact, the CPS household sample is a sub-sample of the much larger sample of households drawn for the 1997-8 Malawi Integrated Household Survey (IHS), which was nationally representative (National Economic Council 2000). A complete description of the sampling process can be found in Sharma et al. (2002).

Results

School enrollment of children in the age group 5-15 years was considered. There were a total of 966 children in this category in 2000, out of which 15.9% had lost at least one parent. About 7.56% were paternal orphans, 3.73% were maternal orphans, and 4.66% were "double" orphans, meaning both parents were deceased. Because of the small sample, and the corresponding smaller number of observations on different types of orphans, all types of orphans are pooled together in the econometric analysis. Out of the 966 children recorded in 2000, 99.98% were again traced in 2004.

Figure 1 shows the age distribution of orphans and non-orphans. While the age distribution of nonorphans in the sample peaks at just over five years of age, the distribution for non-orphans peaks at almost fifteen years, indicating that orphanhood increases with age.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Consistent schooling information is available for only 729 children in the survey. Hence, analysis of schooling outcomes is based on this subgroup. A simple tabulation of school enrollment in 2004 shows that 86% of nonorphans attended school while about only 81% of orphans did so. However, this 5 % point shortfall does not necessarily indicate that orphans are less likely to go to school. For example, if the likelihood of dropping out of school increases with age, and if the likelihood of orphanhood also increases with age (as was shown in figure 1), such a result would still hold even if there was no relationship between orphanhood and school attendance. There could also be other confounding factors arising out of household wealth and location of households. If orphanhood is correlated with these variables, or if the effect of orphanhood on school enrollment is itself modified by these variables (for example, if orphans from poorer households are more likely to drop out of school compared to orphans from richer households), then not incorporating these attributes in the analysis would lead to an erroneous conclusion.

For this reason, a multivariate probit model that relates school attendance to a range of child- and household-specific variables is estimated (table 1) to extract an unbiased estimate of the effect of orphanhood on school attendance. In order to evaluate the robustness of results, five alternative specifications are used. These are discussed below.

Under Specification 1, school enrollment in 2004 is specified as a function of only child level characteristics, namely the child's age and sex, his/her education level (grade level) in 2000, relationship with the household head, and orphanhood status. The relationship variable is a binary variable that equals one if the child is living in households not headed by either parents or grandparents and zero otherwise. Results (column [1]) show that while orphanhood has a negative effect on school enrollment, this effect is not statistically significant. As for the other variables, boys are more likely to be attending school than girls; the likelihood of dropping from school increases with age; and those at higher grade levels in 2000 are more likely to continue attending school. The effect of the relationship variable is not statistically significant.

Specification 2 is similar, but introduces interaction terms that allow the interaction of age, sex, and previous educational status with orphanhood status (column [2]). Thus, in this model, effects of orphanhood are specified to be conditional on the age, sex, as well as previous educational status. Results are similar to the first specification, except that the interaction term between orphanhood status and education level is negative and statistically significant at the 10% level. This result implies that there is greater likelihood of orphans dropping out of school compared to non-orphans as education level increases.

In Specification 3, the probit equation estimated is augmented by household-level variables (column [3]). Specifically, three household variables are introduced:

* Per capita land cultivated,

* Magnitude of negative agricultural shock experienced by the household as a result of 2001 droughts, and

* Household size.