Poverty , AIDS , Orphanhood , Gender , and Child Schooling in Sub - Saharan Africa : A Review of the

The Michigan State University (MSU) International Development Paper series is designed to further the comparative analysis of international development activities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Near East. The papers report research findings on historical, as well as contemporary, international development problems. The series includes papers on a wide range of topics, such as alternative rural development strategies; nonfarm employment and small scale industry; housing and construction; farming and marketing systems; food and nutrition policy analysis; economics of rice production in west Africa; technological change, employment, and income distribution; computer techniques for farm and marketing surveys; farming systems and food security research. The papers are aimed at teachers, researchers, policy makers, donor agencies, and international development practitioners. Selected papers will be translated into French, Spanish, or other languages. Michigan State University agrees to and does hereby grant to the United States Government a royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable license throughout the world to use, duplicate, disclose, or dispose of this publication in any manner and for any purposes and to permit others to do so. There is growing concern that the HIV/AIDS epidemic may reduce long-term human capital development through reductions in child schooling in SSA, thus severely limiting the long-term ability of orphans and their extended families to escape poverty. In response, some have called for targeted schooling subsidies for orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, on the assumption that such children are under-enrolled. This paper provides an overview of the data sources used by existing empirical studies that test for orphan schooling deficits and the methodological challenges that they face. It then reviews the empirical evidence on the effects of orphan status or adult mortality on child schooling, as well as the prevalence of orphans in SSA and their living arrangements. As portrayed by media and some donor reports, the term 'AIDS orphan' often elicits the image of a child who has lost both parents to AIDS, and who either lives in a child-headed household, a household headed by grandparents who cannot afford to send them to school, or in an orphanage. While children in such circumstances are very likely to be vulnerable to poverty and poor schooling outcomes, empirical evidence shows that in most SSA countries, about 90% of orphans have a surviving parent, that a majority of these single-parent orphans live with their surviving parent, and that child-headed households are extremely rare. While a …