Gender, empowerment and schooling: evidence from DHS monogamous household

Sandrine Koissy-Kpein, CEPS/INSTEAD

This paper uses Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 22 sub-Saharan African countries to highlight the link between mothers’ empowerment and schooling decisions in monogamous households. Based on the collective model of Chiappori (1988, 1992), the analysis starts with the argument that altruistic fathers and mothers have different effects on the education of their sons and daughters as a result of differences in their preferences and/or in the children’s human capital technologies. In our empirical analysis, we define a proxy for women’s empowerment using information provided by DHS surveys: education, labor market participation outside the household (self employed and employed), participation in decisions-making process, attitude toward gender inequality and mother’s age. The results suggest that empowering mothers could lead to improving children’s and especially girls’ school attendance.