Parental expectations and school enrolment decisions: Evidence from rural Ghana

We use field data to investigate factors which influence parents’ decision to enrol children in schools in rural Ghana. The empirical results identified a host of socio-economic and household-level factors including remittances parents expect from investing in education, parents perception of a child's desirable professions, cost of schooling and discount rate as significant determinants of parental school enrolment decision. When gender of the child and remittances are taken into account, we show male parents are more likely to invest in education of boys than girls because they expect significantly higher returns from their investment in boys. Female parents do not show such gender preference. The proportion of children enrolled in school is positively related to average cost of schooling for male parents Gender of parent plays a significant role in school enrolment decision making