Determinants of Enrollment

The main findings can be summarized as follows. First, enrollment rates in primary school for poor rural girls are particularly low (59.8 percent). Furthermore, enrollment rates in primary school show a substantial range of variation across governorates. The widest variations are those for rural girls (from 38 percent in Missan to 88 percent in Sulaimaniya, Kirkuk, and Diala). Taking the population size of each governorate into account, it can be observed that about half of all rural girls 6–11 years old who have not enrolled in primary school live in four governorates (Ninevah, Babil, Thi Qar, and Missan). For intermediate school, enrollment rates are on the whole relatively low (both in absolute terms, 36.7 percent, and by international standards). Moreover, they show large variations across per capita expenditure (PCE) deciles (irrespective of the gender of the child and the urban/rural character of the area where she/he lives). Furthermore, a multivariate analysis shows that the predicted probabilities that a girl between 12 and 14 years old is enrolled in intermediate school are very different for rural and urban areas (19 and 35 percent, respectively). Because this gap is found both for poor and nonpoor girls and while controlling for many other factors (such as poverty rates, parents’ educational level), it seems to be a pure ―rural‖ effect. Moreover, the demographic structure of a household also plays a significant role in determining intermediate school enrollment rates for girls but not for boys. A further relevant finding is that the direct expenditures on education are not a negligible share of PCE. In particular, for poor students they account on average for 8.9, 14.6, and 23.4 percent of PCE at the primary, intermediate, and secondary levels of schooling, respectively. These already substantial shares are likely to be much larger for the bottom PCE deciles. However, the most relevant reason for nonenrollment in primary school supplied in the IHSES 2007—representing around half of all responses for both girls and boys—is what is coded as a lack of interest, either on the part of the child herself/himself or the family. Understanding what these responses mean could help explain low enrollment rates. Additionally, social reasons play a role in the nonenrollment of girls in primary schools (in 13 percent of cases, and 17 percent in rural areas). Annex 6. Education 6.4 Determinants of Enrollment