Gender, smallholder market participation and parental investment on child education in Ethiopia

Birhanu Megersa Lenjiso, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Jeroen Smits, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

We examine links between gender, household market participation and parental willingness to invest in their children’s education under three experimental conditions; private, public/information and negotiation/communication condition. Willingness to invest in children’s education was higher among mothers compared to fathers and in the conditions with knowledge about the partner’s experimental situation compared to the private condition. Investments were also higher among older parents and among parents with more children. If one of the partners invested more in the children’s education, the other partner also had a higher propensity to do so. The effect of smallholder milk market participation was strongly positive in the bivariate analysis but became substantially weaker and only marginally significant (P<0.1) in the multivariate analysis. We conclude that money in the hands of women and information exchange about income and investment opportunities has the potential to improve investment on child education in Ethiopia