Determinants of educational participation and gender differences in education in six Arab countries

We study determinants of educational participation and gender differences in education for young children in six Arab countries: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Although these countries have made much progress in getting young children into school, school dropout after age 11 is still very high and in the rural areas major gender differences in participation exist. In the cities of most countries (except Yemen) gender differences have largely disappeared. Multivariate analyses show that similar household-level factors (e.g. wealth, education, number of siblings) are important as in the West, but that the importance of household-level factors compared to context factors is much less. For young girls, as much as 70% of the variation in participation is explained by context factors. For older girls and boys this is less, but still substantially more than in the West. Strengthening the position of mothers and improving educational facilities seem particularly important for reducing gender differences. Acknowledgements We are grateful to the Pan Arab Project for Family Health of the League of Arab States and Dr. Ahmed Abdel Monem for making the Papfam data sets available for this project and to MEASURE DHS for providing the Demographic and Health Surveys. Correspondence address: Jeroen Smits & Janine Huisman, Nijmegen Center for Economics (NiCE), Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9108, 6500 HK Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Phone: +31243612319/5890 [email protected] Introduction The recent upheavals in the Arab world illustrate the discontent felt by broad parts of the population in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. According to the Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR), this region distinguishes itself from other parts of the world in that it lacks freedom, knowledge and gender equity (UNDP, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2009). This paper focuses on the last two aspects, the low level of education and the significant gender differences in education, which, according to the AHDR, should be addressed in order to bring lasting change to the region. An educated population is vital for constructing democratic societies, reducing poverty and inequality, and building dynamic, competitive economies (Barro, 1999; Sen, 1999; Case, 2001; Word Bank, 2006). A higher level of education of women has the additional advantage of reducing infant and child mortality and malnutrition, reducing fertility and enhancing family welfare (King and Anne Hill, 1993; Smith and Haddad, 2000; Lee and Mason, 2005; UNESCO, 2010). Without educating the women, it will be very difficult to change the traditional value patterns that prevail in many parts of the Arab world. Women without education have little access to information, as they are not able to read and sometimes even do not speak the dominant language (author reference). They depend heavily on the people in their nearby environment for contact with and knowledge about the outside world. As a result, these women play an important role in the reproduction of existing values—including values which stress a subordinate position of women—to the next generation (Armstrong and Armstrong, 1994; author reference). Without educating the women and connecting them to the outside world, persistent change will be very difficult to achieve (UNDP, 2002, 2006). In this paper we take stock of the situation with regard to educational participation of young children in six Arab countries. We delve into the roots of under-enrollment in primary education, early school dropout in secondary education, and differences between boys and girls. As the weak position of women in the Arab world is generally explained as the result of restrictive factors in the living environment (Inglehard and Norris, 2003; Moghadam, 1993, 2004; author reference), we extend the classic status attainment model -which focuses on socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the family background -with cultural and economic context factors. This allows us to assess the relative importance of household and context factors in explaining educational participation and gender differences in education in these countries. Figure 1 provides an impression of the way educational participation has developed in the last decades in the Arab countries on which we focus: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen. The figures (derived from the data used in this study) show the percentages of women and men who never entered primary education according to the period in which they were of primary school-age. They reveal substantial improvements in primary entrance rates over the last decades of the 20 century for all six countries. The percentage of girls who never entered primary education decreased from 30-84 percent in the 1975-1980 cohort to 7-51 percent in the 1995-2000 cohort. For boys, the non-entrance rates were already much lower in the 1975-1980 cohort (9-41 percent), but also for them we see clear improvements, especially in the countries with the least favourable starting positions (Morocco and Yemen). The data also confirm the conclusions of the AHDR that there remains much work to be done. Even in the most recent cohorts, in none of the countries all children had entered primary education. This becomes even clearer when we look at Figure 2, which shows for each age group the percentages of children who were not enrolled in education at time of interview (2001-2005). We see that participation was highest among children aged 8 and 9 (in Yemen aged 11) and that already at age 10 the first children started to drop out of school. From age 11 onwards, participation decreased strongly in all countries. For girls dropout was especially strong in Morocco, Syria and Yemen, with over half of 15-year old girls out of school. For boys dropout was strongest in Morocco and Syria. Gender differences were most pronounced in Yemen, with 30 percent of girls against 10 percent of boys not going to school at all. The figures lead us to the conclusion that, although getting children and in particular girls into school remains a problem in these countries, the major challenge currently faced by them is to prevent the ones who are in school from dropping out. The aim of this paper is twofold. First we want to provide insight into the reasons why some young children in these countries are not in school and why so many older children drop out too early. Second, we want to increase our understanding of the causes of the large gender differences in education in these countries. To fulfil these aims we have build a multilevel database in which household-level information on 80,000 children aged 8-15 is supplemented with relevant context information at the level of the nearby (village or neighbourhood) and further away (district) environment. The data are analyzed with advanced multilevel logistic regression models, with educational participation of the children as dependent variable and socio-economic, demographic and cultural household characteristics and socio-economic and cultural context characteristics as independent variables. Because the rural areas of these countries are much less developed and more traditional than the urban areas, we will test for variation between urban and rural areas in effects of risk factors and gender differences. In this way, more specific information is obtained that may help developing tailor-made policy interventions aimed at improving educational participation in specific problem situations. Our analyses will be conducted separately for children aged 8-11 and for children aged 12-15 who went to school before. The outcomes for the first group will reveal the household and context determinants of going to school of young children. Those for the second group will show which factors are most important in keeping children in school and preventing school dropout after age 11. Theoretical background According to human capital theory, participation in education is an investment in human capital made because of the expected returns later in life (Becker 1964). In the case of young children, the investment decision is generally made by the parents or other caretakers. They are expected to weigh off the future benefits of sending their children to school against the immediate costs. Those benefits can be for the child, but also for the parents themselves, because in the absence of pension systems, children may be their old-age security. The decisions made by the parents need not be rational; they are influenced by how the parents perceive the world around them -which not necessary is in line with reality -and they may be colored by cultural norms and values -which may legitimize existing inequalities. In the following sections, the major household and context-level factors affecting the outcomes of these decisions and a young child’s schooling chances in these countries are discussed.