Income Shocks, Child Fostering and Education in Senegal

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This paper examines the practice of child fostering in Senegal. Specifically, it looks at the treatment that fostered children are subject to in their host families relative to their host siblings. It compares the effect of exogenous income shocks on biological and fostered children in the same family. This comparison reveals whether there is a differential in educational investment between the two groups while accounting for any gap in treatment that might exist at baseline. Fluctuations in household economic conditions significantly change three variables for fostered children: their ability to read and write, their school enrollment, and their primary school completion rate. On the other hand, for biological children, these same metrics are mostly unchanged whether the shock is positive or negative. This leads to positive shocks shrinking the differences in educational ability, school enrollment and future earnings between the two groups by 0.21 points, 16 p.p. and 35 basis points respectively; negative shocks worsen the gap between them in the same magnitude. These results indicate that fostered children are less insured than their host siblings, although there is no difference in educational outcomes between the two groups absent any shock.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2016

Author	Cisse, Abdoulaye
Primary advisor	Dupas, Pascaline
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics

Subject	Senegal
Subject	Children
Subject	Fostering
Subject	Education
Subject	Income Shock
Subject	Stanford Department of Economics
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/mj139kw0012

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Preferred Citation: Cisse, Abdoulaye. (2016). Income Shocks, Child Fostering and Education in Senegal. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/mj139kw0012

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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