Structural changes in African households: Female-headed households and Children's educational investments in an imperfect credit market in Africa

Edward Asiedu*, Amin Karimu, Abdul Ganiyu Iddrisu

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1 Citation (SciVal)

    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.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)30-42
    Number of pages13
    JournalStructural Change and Economic Dynamics
    Volume68
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished (VoR) - 20 Sept 2023

    Keywords

    • Female-headed households
    • Educational investment
    • Imperfect credit markets
    • Structural change in households
    • Affirmative action
    • Ghana

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