Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
非洲的地区偏袒与教育程度
Regional favoritism and educational attainment in Africa
摘要
We investigate the impact of regional favoritism on educational attainment in Africa. Using geocoded, individual-level survey data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we show that men who grew up in areas geographically linked to a national leader attain higher levels of education later in life. In contrast, we observe no beneficial effects of geographical leader connections for women on average; only a subset of women who have additional ethnic ties and are possibly from wealthier families experience such effects. We interpret these results using a discrete choice framework that models decisions regarding whether children continue schooling based on perceived returns to education versus the costs of that education. This framework suggests that preferential educational policies are unlikely to be the primary cause of the higher attainment observed for men and the subset of women mentioned previously. Instead, educational choices appear to respond to expectations of local economic booms in geographically connected regions. Additional evidence, such as regarding the likelihood of skilled employment later in life, supports this interpretation.
中文摘要
我们考察区域偏袒对非洲教育 attainment 的影响。利用来自人口与健康调查（DHS）的带有地理编码的个体层面调查数据，我们表明，在 geographical 上与一位国家领导人相关联的地区长大的男性，日后会获得更高水平的教育。相比之下，平均而言，我们未观察到地理上的领导人关联对女性产生有益影响；只有一部分拥有额外族群联系、且可能来自更富裕家庭的女性才会经历此类效应。我们用一个离散选择框架来解释这些结果，该框架对有关儿童是否继续上学的决策建模，依据是对教育感知回报与教育成本的比较。这一框架表明，优惠性教育政策不太可能是所观察到的男性以及前述部分女性更高教育 attainment 的主要原因。相反，教育选择似乎是对地理上相连地区本地经济繁荣预期的反应。其他证据，例如关于日后获得技能型就业的可能性，支持这一解释。