Structural Changes in African Households: Female-headed households and Children's Educational Investments in an Imperfect Credit Market in Africa
Asiedua, Edward and Karimu, Amin and Iddrisu, Abdul Ganiyu (2023) Structural Changes in African Households: Female-headed households and Children's Educational Investments in an Imperfect Credit Market in Africa. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 68. pp. 30-42. ISSN 0954-349X
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Abstract
Female headship of households has increased significantly around the world. This paper establishes a link between gender, income, and children’s educational investments in an imperfect credit market. We show using a representative household survey from Ghana that, even though there is a positive correlation between income and educational investments, there are expected and unexpected heterogeneities in income and children's educational investments. We find that, whereas income levels for male-headed households with children 6 to 18 years are over 20% higher, female-headed households tend to invest 31% to 38% more on children’s education than male-headed households. In imperfect credit markets, higher educational investments could be taking place at the expense of other household outcomes such as food/leisure. Our empirical results show the need for different interventions for different households. We also show how institutional changes that recognize affirmative action can interact with household-level structural changes.
| Item Type: | Article | ||||||
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| Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.strueco.2023.09.008 | ||||||
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Female-headed households, Educational investment, Imperfect credit markets, Structural change in households, Affirmative action, Ghana | ||||||
| Subjects: | CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-02 - economics > CAH15-02-01 - economics | ||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > Birmingham City Business School | ||||||
| Depositing User: | Amin Karimu | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 26 Oct 2023 13:39 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 26 Oct 2023 13:39 | ||||||
| URI: | https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/14875 |
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