An Analysis of Intrahousehold Decision-Making on Children’s Schooling in Malawi Primary Education: Focused on Matrilocal and Patrilocal Farming Households

• In Event: Education, Difference and Development (II)

Proposal

Schooling outcomes are important to policy-makers and many development organizations largely because of the close relationship between a region’s human capital stock and its economic development. The spillover effects are also well documented. The first few years of schooling are vital for children’s human capital formation and cognitive progress; what children learn during these years lays a solid foundation for their development and is a strong predictor of the skills they accumulate in later years. Nonetheless, educational attainment continues to be low in many developing countries. Moreover, wide gender disparities are observed, with female children typically receiving less education than their male counterparts. Because schooling investments are typically made at the household level, poor households must make decisions about the optimum allocation of scarce resources towards child schooling.

Maternal autonomy has been linked to positive outcomes for children’s health and well-being early in life in low- and middle-income countries throughout the world. Malawi is of particular interest in this regard because matrilineal descent and devolution of land rights are the traditional norms for most of the population. On the other hand, the formal landholding system is modelled on patrilineal English legislation. Thus, there are two types of decent system, and these systems are mixed. However, previous literature lacks empirical studies clarifying the influences of maternal autonomy on children’s schooling. Moreover, most studies on descent system have only been carried out in unilineal society, where it is not possible to observe the differential treatment of both patrilineal and matrilineal groups.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether maternal autonomy was associated with children’s years of schooling in Malawi. Furthermore, this study aimes to assess whether the relationships between maternal autonomy and years of schooling varied by matrilineal, patrilineal, and individual characteristics such as gender. This study employs a hurdle model and ordered probit model analysis to investigate the association between maternal autonomy and children’s years of schooling by using a Malawi Demographic and Health Survey (MDHS) in 2015-2016. Maternal autonomy comprises three domains: economic autonomy, socio-familial autonomy, and legal autonomy.

The results show a positive association of maternal economic and socio-familial autonomy with children’s years of schooling for girls, but not for boys. Legal autonomy has a negative association, but not statistically significant with children’s years of schooling. Based on the results, this study also suggest matrilineal women with higher levels of decision-making autonomy may have a stronger preference for girl’s schooling and may have a greater say in making and implementing decisions regarding girl’s education, compared to patrilineal women with lower autonomy levels.

Author

• Yudai Ishii