Abstract
The practice of informal fostering is prevalent in many developing regions of the world. Our paper investigates the effects of this practice on school attendance in Jamaica using a rotating panel data set of children constructed from the 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 rounds of the Jamaican Survey of Living Conditions. Using panel data allows us to deal more effectively with the problem of endogeneity by being able to control for household and child fixed effects. Our findings indicate that the effect of fostering on school attendance depends on whether the household is a beneficiary of PATH, a conditional cash transfer programme instituted by the Government of Jamaica in 2001. We find that a foster child that lives within a non-PATH household is associated with being less likely to be absent from school than a foster child who lives in a household that benefits from PATH. This is true especially for foster girls. Although the PATH programme generally appears to be linked to the improvement in school attendance of Jamaican children, the benefits of the programme may be skewed towards biological children.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 102483 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | International Journal of Educational Development |
Volume | 87 |
Early online date | 16 Sept 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to thank Robert Elliott and Simon Appleton for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) and the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies for the data sets. We thank the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department of Economics at the University of Birmingham for financial support. All remaining errors are ours.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
- Child fostering
- Jamaica
- School attendance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Development
- Sociology and Political Science