The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper Series 5143 and Social Sciences Research Network Paper
November 2009
Abstract
Female education levels are very low in many developing countries.
Does maternal education have a causal impact on children's educational
outcomes even at these very low levels of education? By combining a
nationwide census of schools in Pakistan with household data, the
authors use the availability of girls' schools in the mother's birth
village as an instrument for maternal schooling to address this issue.
Since public schools in Pakistan are segregated by gender, the
instrument affects only maternal education rather than the education
levels of both mothers and fathers. The analysis finds that children
of mothers with some education spend 75 minutes more on educational
activities at home compared with children whose mothers report no
education at all. Mothers with some education also spend more time
helping their children with school work; the effect is stronger (an
extra 40 minutes per day) in families where the mother is likely the
primary care-giver. Finally, test scores for children whose mothers
have some education are higher in English, Urdu (the vernacular), and
mathematics by 0.24-0.35 standard deviations. There is no relationship
between maternal education and mother's time spent on paid work or
housework--a posited channel through which education affects
bargaining power within the household. And there is no relationship
between maternal education and the mother's role in educational
decisions or in the provision of other child-specific goods, such as
expenditures on pocket money, uniforms, and tuition. The data
therefore suggest that at these very low levels of education, maternal
education does not substantially affect a mother's bargaining power
within the household. Instead, maternal education could directly
increase the mother's productivity or affect her preferences toward
children's education in a context where her bargaining power is low.
Citation
Andrabi, Tahir, Jishnu Das, and Asim Khwaja. "What Did You Do All Day? Maternal Education and Child Outcomes." The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper Series 5143 and Social Sciences Research Network Paper, November 2009.