Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World (1999) / Chapter Skim
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7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa
7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa
Pages 181-215
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From page 181... ...
International agencies are moving ahead rapidly with ambitious programs aimed at increasing female school enrollment. But when we focus on impoverished communities and low-income families, we find very little empirical evidence on the factors that explain why some daughters stay in school while others exit.
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From page 182... ...
We find that the propensity of daughters to remain in school is associated with the family's economic consumption levels, the family's social structure, and labor and social demands placed on young females. We also find significant variability among black ethnic groups in when daughters typically leave school, variation that corresponds in part to regional histories and school supply.
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From page 183... ...
borrows heavily from this framework, arguing that the "emotional and economic nucleation" of the family occurs as parents come to see, within modernizing contexts, that bearing more children will not necessarily lead to greater long-term wealth or security in old age. As firms and institutions, especially the state and modern schools, exogenously come to associate social status with greater human capital investment, parents factor this into their calculus for allocating household-level resources and labor demands in ways that boost their children's school attainment.
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From page 184... ...
In demographic circles, for instance, the grand theory of demographic transition has proven to be of limited utility in some African contexts: in countries such as Botswana or Kenya, economic commercialization unfolds, modern rules emerge, female enrollment rises, but fertility behavior changes only slightly (Isiugo-Abanihe, 1994~. Similarly, school attainment levels have been highly uneven among societies and within particular regions, despite steady modernization and huge investments in mass education since the 1960s.
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From page 185... ...
Third, parents' cultural commitments and social practices, extracted from a modernizing institutional environment, may further explain variability in female school attainment. A variety of cultural practices have received empirical attention in Africa: the argument that sexual and marriage practices are culturally determined, occasionally altered by modernizing values (Whiting and Whiting, 1991~; the role of polygyny and resulting demands placed on young women (Lesthaeghe, 1989~; bride price and the extent to which schooling is factored in; initiation rites and role conflicts for young females who are now culturally ordained as "adults"; and the role of kin, not only the husband and wife, in making reproductive decisions (see Bledsoe and Cohen, 1993; Hyde, 1993~.
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From page 186... ...
As an example, the new family-economy model has helped explain an early contradiction in the school attainment literature: as societies industrialized from an agricultural or commercial base, enrollment rates often grew most rapidly in rural areas, not within industrializing centers where neoclassical theory accurately predicted higher economic returns to more schooling (Fishlow, 1966~. In the United States, the historical evidence on household decision making shows that parents took into account immediate labor demands and income opportunities, not longer-term optimization or human capital strategies.
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From page 187... ...
For example, in historically diverse and balkanized societies, such as South Africa, ethnic membership frequently corresponds to the family's regional location or designated "homeland," a point to which we will return. Economic Linkages Borrowing from the neoclassical household model, sociologists have emphasized the importance of economic resources and labor demands as parents allocate their children's time between work and school.
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From page 188... ...
Yet certain social linkages and obligations place social demands on children that pull them out of school. This is especially so in impoverished contexts where secondary schooling is not a fully legitimated institution, including developing-country settings where girls' school attendance is not taken for granted.
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From page 189... ...
The separation of black ethnic groups into "homelands" also led to variability in the availability and quality of secondary schooling. Outside white communities, South African families suffer from extreme levels of poverty.
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From page 190... ...
this rate is 83 percent for families in the most affluent quintile.4 Among the poor, just one-fifth have electricity, and almost half use wood as their main source of energy. South Africa's infant mortality rate remains at 53 per 1,000 live births; the total fertility rate stands at 4.1 (Erasmus, 1994; Reconstruction and Development Programme, 1995~.5 Variability Across Regional Contexts Our analysis focuses on girls' school attainment among the largest black ethnic groups.
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From page 191... ...
In 1993, the proportion of adults who had completed secondary school equaled 13.4 percent among North Sothos, versus 10.8 percent among Zulu households. Young adolescents in North Sotho communities currently display much higher rates of persistence through secondary school: in 1993, 54 percent of all children who began grade 1 had persisted to grade 11, whereas this figure equaled just 26 and 11 percent, respectively,7 among Zulu and Xhosa youths.
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From page 192... ...
192 ca ~ C)
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From page 193... ...
193 to ~Do ~ Do ~ id, CM o (a\ ~ ~ Do CM ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ CM ~ ~ ~ ~ CM °° ca Do 2 ~ so ~ ~ u o 3 ' ' ° ° U o ~ o U ~ o o to ~ o off ~ ° V, ~o ~·0 · ,~ V so .
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From page 194... ...
Figure 7-3 focuses only on those girls who had left school by the time of the survey and reported their school attainment. Recognizing that right-censoring of cases is occurring, here too we see significant ethnic differences in school attainment levels for daughters: 5.6 and 5.9 years, respectively, for Zulu and Xhosa females, versus 6.7 years for North Sotho females (p < .05~.8 For many young females, leaving school may coincide with becoming pregnant.
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From page 195... ...
(NOTE: Sample restricted to girls, aged 11-25, who have left school. For Zulu, n = 177; Xhosa, n = 138; North Sotho, n = 85.)
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From page 196... ...
Importantly, as the incidence of pregnancy becomes significant for young females, after age 19, many are still enrolled in school, having returned to or remaining in secondary school or postsecondary education. HOW FAMILY-ECONOMY AND SOCIAL FACTORS INFLUENCE GIRLS' SCHOOL ATTAINMENT We now examine how the household's economic and social attributes particularly its resources and demands pertaining to daughters help explain whether and when young females leave school.
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From page 197... ...
or simply to sporadic and low wage income.l° Labor demands may be greater for eldest daughters whose mothers are employed outside the household: with mothers away at work, domestic duties may fall more heavily on the daughter's shoulders. This is one of our principal reasons for focusing our study on the eldest daughter.
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From page 198... ...
.ll We also postulate that the mother's 11 Among sampled Zulu households with a resident daughter age 11 -25, 1 6 percent reported having an absent father. The incidence was 20 percent for North Sothos and 21 percent for Xhosas.
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From page 199... ...
Among eldest daughters, aged 11-25, who had left school, 53 percent reported having experienced at least one pregnancy; just 14 percent of these females were aged 19 or younger. Among daughters still attending school at the time of the survey, 15 percent had experienced at least one pregnancy.l2 Finally, we added pregnancy as an exogenous predictor of school attainment, assessing the extent to which pregnancy substitutes for the other predictors of female attainment.l3 Surviving Secondary School: Explaining Which Girls Leave School and When To assess the influence of the above family-economy and social factors on when young females leave school, we constructed discrete-time hazard models (Tuma and Hannan, 1984; Singer and Willett,1993~.
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From page 200... ...
of girls leaving school in any particular period given that they were in school during the prior period. Our second reason for focusing on eldest daughters is that they are most likely to be subjected to labor demands by adult household members, especially if the mother is employed outside the home in the wage sector.
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From page 201... ...
FIGURE 7-5 Survival and hazard plots of when girls leave school. Influence of Family-Economy and Household-Level Social Factors 201 Results from our hazard-rate models appear in Table 7-2.
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From page 203... ...
203 o ° ~ ~ ', t ~_I X 1 ~1 ~1 ~1 CM ~o ~ ~ ~o ° o ~ oo .
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From page 205... ...
Girls in North Sotho communities are much less likely to leave school. Xhosa females display a lower risk of dropping out as well, although the difference is less than for North Sothos (Zulus form the base group)
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From page 206... ...
"Mom's schooling, O yrs. 43Mom's schooling, primary school l _ 8 9 Panel B: Hazard differences for father present and father absent households Percentage dropped-out in period 40 30 20 10 O ~v 1 2 3 | e rather present father absent l -- it - 4 _ _ , _ 4 5 6 7 School grade level [years]
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From page 207... ...
This gap rises to 21 points for Zulu and North Sotho daughters who enter postsecondary education. Overall, 67 percent of North Sotho daughters complete some postsecondary schooling, versus just 35 percent of Zulu females.
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From page 208... ...
secondary schools Percentage of clusters 0% 24% 2.53t with tarmac roads Index of health care 3.7 3.9 0.64 workersb Percentage of clusters 13% 20% 1.11 with resident doctor aNorth Sotho communities are defined as those with more than 80 percent of households with North Sotho speakers. Overall multivariate analysis of variance is significant: F = 2.65, *
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From page 209... ...
The influence of mothers' school attainment on daughter's attainment is not surprising, but the finding is notable given that we are focusing on impoverished black families. Ethnic membership is consistently telling for North Sothos, independently of the influence of family-economy factors.
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From page 210... ...
But "ethnicity" in South Africa also manifests shared local institutional histories, thanks to the apartheid regime's migration controls and forced segregation of black groups under homeland administrations. The arid and rural Northern Transvaal province, where the former Lebowa homeland for North Sothos is situated, has a depressed regional economy, even relative to other poor regions.
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From page 211... ...
Where institutional conditions vary beneficially such as the greater supply of secondary schools in North Sotho communities opportunities exist for policy makers to act with greater precision. But as long as development agencies and governments assume that universal factors constrain female school attainment, costly policies and school interventions may continue to yield disappointing results.
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From page 212... ...
1988 Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94:S95S120.
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From page 213... ...
Keiley 1995a Why do daughters leave school in southern Africa? Family economy and mothers' commitments.
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From page 214... ...
Cape Town: University of Cape Town, South African Development Research Unit. Reconstruction and Development Programme 1995 Key Indicators of Poverty in South Africa.
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From page 215... ...
. Halfway House, South Africa: Development Bank of Southern Africa.
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