Orphans and Schooling in Africa: A Longitudinal Analysis

AIDS deaths could have a major impact on economic development by affecting the human capital accumulation of the next generation. We estimate the impact of parent death on primary school partici-pation using an unusual fi ve-year panel data set of over 20,000 Kenyan children. There is a substantial decrease in school participation following a parent death and a smaller drop before the death (presum-ably due to pre-death morbidity). Estimated impacts are smaller in specifi cations without individual fi xed effects, suggesting that estimates based on cross-sectional data are biased toward zero. Effects are largest for children whose mothers died and, in a novel fi nding, for those with low baseline aca-demic performance. ore than one in nine children under age 18 in sub-Saharan Africa have lost a parent, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic is the leading cause (UNAIDS, UNICEF, and USAID 2004).1 HIV/AIDS deaths today could have major long-term effects on economic development by affecting the human capital accumulation of the next generation. While some have argued that HIV/AIDS is the key development issue facing Africa (UNAIDS 2000), and children orphaned by AIDS have received considerable international media coverage,2 surprisingly little systematic empirical research has estimated the impact of parent death on children’