Social Norms and the Persistence of Educational Inequality

• In Event: Religion and Political Behavior in Africa

Abstract

Across sub-Saharan Africa there is a large education gap between Christians and Muslims. Compared to Christians, Muslims have fewer years of schooling, are less likely to be literate and Muslim children are less likely to be in school. The magnitude of this gap is increasing with the share of the local population that is Muslim. Previous work has shown that this latter phenomenon is not fully explained by poverty, beliefs about the economic returns to education, displacement of formal schooling by religious schooling, Muslim girls’ schooling, or access/distance to school. In this paper, I present quantitative and qualitative evidence consistent with a cultural explanation for the persistence of the Muslim-Christian education gap in Africa: Christians have stronger social norms about school attendance than Muslims. First, drawing on archival records, as well as interviews and focus groups conducted in Malawi, Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana, I document the emergence of distinct social norms about formal education between Christians and Muslims, resulting from the close association between formal education and Christianity during the colonial period. Then, within Malawi, I draw on interviews with nearly 100 parents, religious leaders, teachers, and village leaders, as well as participant observation in two Muslim majority villages, to develop a theory about the role of social norms in explaining schooling decisions today. I test the implications of this theory using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Malawi. Specifically, I measure social norms about the appropriateness of completing various levels of school, and how these norms differ across Christians and Muslims in Muslim minority and Muslim majority areas. I find that there are stronger schooling norms for completing higher levels of education among Muslims living as a local minority compared to those living as a local majority, especially among girls, as well as stronger schooling norms for completing secondary school among Christians as compared to Muslims in both Muslim minority and majority areas.

Author

• Melina Raquel Platas Izama, NYU Abu Dhabi