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Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World (1999)

Chapter: 7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa

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Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

7
Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa

Bruce Fuller and Xiaoyan Liang

Introduction

Considerable evidence demonstrates the influence of formal schooling on women's fertility and child health practices, as reviewed in earlier chapters. Notwithstanding important exceptions observed in Africa, longer schooling for girls and young women appears to alter an important range of fertility and child health behaviors (Cochrane, 1979; Hill and King, 1993). Accumulating evidence also shows that spending more of one's childhood in school usually results in higher levels of learning—despite uneven levels of school quality and a still hazy understanding of how classroom processes alter girls' knowledge or beliefs in ways that affect fertility and maternal health practices (Lockheed and Verspoor, 1991).

We are operating largely in the empirical dark, however, on a parallel issue, which is the focus of this chapter: What local forces—operating from both within the family and the surrounding economic and institutional environment—lead some girls to stay in school longer while many others drop out?

International agencies are moving ahead rapidly with ambitious programs aimed at increasing female school enrollment. But when we focus on impoverished communities and low-income families, we find very little empirical evidence on the factors that explain why some daughters stay in school while others exit. Western models of school attainment, relying on mobility traditions within industrialized societies, are partially useful in illuminating the economic and cultural forces that may explain girls' educational attainment in developing-country settings (Fuller et al., 1995a; Haveman and Wolfe, 1995). The purpose of this

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

chapter is to advance theoretical understanding of the role of the family's character and practices, especially variability in the work and social demands parents place on daughters, in determining when girls leave school.

First, we review how sociologists and economists have represented the school attainment process within developing-country settings. Second, we report on our household-level study of female school attainment among young black South Africans. After reviewing the economic and social factors that explain local variation in girls' school attainment, we examine how those factors help explain whether and when girls leave school. The final section presents a summary and conclusions. We find that the propensity of daughters to remain in school is associated with the family's economic consumption levels, the family's social structure, and labor and social demands placed on young females. We also find significant variability among black ethnic groups in when daughters typically leave school, variation that corresponds in part to regional histories and school supply. Our analysis suggests that unless policy and program designers take local institutions and particular conditions into account, their well-meaning interventions may be costly and ineffective.

Household And Institutional Determinants Of Girls' School Attainment

We often confound how parents make decisions about fertility behavior with whether, or how, parents press their children to stay in school. Working from a rational-choice framework, household economists and demographers argue that (1) parents come to see that more individualized ("higher-quality") childrearing holds greater economic utility, and (2) this realization leads to more determined family planning, lower birth rates, and stronger motivation to keep daughters in school for longer periods of time (Easterlin and Crimmins, 1985). Beyond the household are macroeconomic and institutional forces: evolving labor demand for female workers, shifts in family income, modern forms of social status, and women's variable commitment to reproductive independence (Caldwell and Caldwell, 1990).

A major ingredient of this shifting institutional context is the expansion of mass schooling. Through mass education, the state attempts to define the legitimate social roles that girls should normatively fill. Yet only recently has a family-level literature emerged from sociology that attempts to link the household's immediate economic situation to the broader institutional and cultural context by examining how forces at these two levels of social organization shape girls' school attainment (e.g., Walters and James, 1992). The first conceptual step is to separate household-level processes from both the economic context and social institutions, such as the state and school, that may variably condition family-level action.

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Neoclassical Household Decision Making

Recent work by Haveman and Wolfe (1995:1832) reiterates the neoclassical claims by which variation in children's educational attainment is often explained:

Economists have viewed the process of children's school attainment to be an aspect of the theory of family behavior. The family is viewed as a production unit which employs real inputs in order to generate utility for its members. Adults ...make decisions regarding the generation of family economic resources [and] determine the uses of these resources. Parents make a variety of other choices such as fertility, location, and family stability that influence the returns to productive efforts. The amount of family resources allocated to children, the nature of these resources, and the timing of their distribution influence the school attainment of children.

This model is cross-generational with regard to school attainment: it argues that parents' decisions about their fertility behavior and family structure occur concurrently with choices about their children's school attainment. These decisions, although bundled by the rational parent, aim to advance the individual child's human capital, thereby advancing the family's long-term welfare (Becker, 1976).

Caldwell's earlier work (1976) borrows heavily from this framework, arguing that the "emotional and economic nucleation" of the family occurs as parents come to see, within modernizing contexts, that bearing more children will not necessarily lead to greater long-term wealth or security in old age. As firms and institutions, especially the state and modern schools, exogenously come to associate social status with greater human capital investment, parents factor this into their calculus for allocating household-level resources and labor demands in ways that boost their children's school attainment. Becker and Tomes (1976:S148) note that as parents become upwardly mobile, they invest more heavily in the quality rather than the quantity of children, and they often move to communities where "public contributions to their children's schooling would be greater."

Here the argument shifts to the contextual or institutional level: the commercializing and modernizing context, highly variable across local regions, is changing the structure of wage labor and economic opportunity. In addition, the formal school gains the authority to allocate youths to status and social-class positions. Even household economists are now struggling to incorporate context, rather than simply postulating that preferences are exogenous to the intrafamily utility-maximization process. Haveman and Wolfe (1995:1837), for example, move beyond the family unit by arguing that governments make choices to improve poor families' economic and social context. Parents are viewed as "choosing" various family practices from their environment: "the sort of monitoring, disciplinary, nurturing, and expectational environment in which their children are raised." Drawing on the notion of ''social capital" advanced by Loury (1977) and Coleman (1988), Haveman and Wolfe argue that the state can act in ways that

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

strengthen family and kin support and guide both the character and intensity of parents' investments in their children. The family thus mediates information and resources emanating from institutions to improve intrahousehold socialization practices and advance school attainment.1 The households and surrounding institutional arrangements are therefore acting in tandem.

Institutional Resources and Constraints That Bound Family Choices

We must delineate more crisply those institution-level forces which condition intrafamily decision making. Indeed, many of the quandaries over the education-fertility link expressed by demographers and others interested in population issues may stem from an inadequate understanding of how household-level processes and institutional arrangements operate simultaneously. In demographic circles, for instance, the grand theory of demographic transition has proven to be of limited utility in some African contexts: in countries such as Botswana or Kenya, economic commercialization unfolds, modern rules emerge, female enrollment rises, but fertility behavior changes only slightly (Isiugo-Abanihe, 1994). Similarly, school attainment levels have been highly uneven among societies and within particular regions, despite steady modernization and huge investments in mass education since the 1960s. Females comprise about 25 percent of all secondary school pupils in Chad, versus 56 percent in Namibia. Fewer than half of all children in sub-Saharan Africa reach grade 5, and girls complete 1.5 fewer school years on average relative to boys (World Bank, 1995).

Such variability in the way local parents make decisions about their children's schooling, and over time their own fertility behavior, might be explained by three institution-level forces.

First, the organization of job opportunities varies in ways that establish long-term or immediate returns to staying in school. Labor demands operate differently on girls versus boys. In many parts of Botswana and South Africa, for example, we observe that daughters actually stay in school longer than sons, a phenomenon that can be explained in part by centuries of male labor migration to either commercial centers or cattle fields. In addition, subsistence crop yields are often quite low in arid regions of Southern Africa, so that there is ample discretionary time for daughters to pursue schooling without cutting into time required for domestic chores (Kossoudji and Mueller, 1983).

1  

These arguments also depart from the earliest mobility or status-school attainment studies of sociologists from the 1960s forward. This work has focused on how parents, with variable education levels and occupational status, attempt to reproduce the family's position through human capital investment. The question of mobility has been central to this line of work: Can offspring move up the status hierarchy independently of their parents' class position? This work has not, however, been able to incorporate changes in context, other than to see context as a residual set of exogenous factors that cannot be captured by within-family variables (e.g., Campbell, 1983).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Second, the state's educational policies, formulated over time, can induce family demand for female schooling. African countries have expanded their secondary school systems at widely varying rates since the 1960s. The Demographic and Health Surveys of the late 1980s, for instance, showed that just over half of all women aged 20-24 in Zimbabwe had completed some secondary schooling, versus just 2 percent in Mali and 10 percent in Ghana (Bledsoe and Cohen, 1993). The state also can influence norms about the legitimate location and role of young females. When the Botswana government reduced the terminal year of junior-secondary school from grade 10 to grade 9, female enrollment rates quickly began to decline after grade 9 (Fuller et al., 1995a). In addition, the state can influence parents' expressed demand for schooling by lowering the direct costs of enrollment, relieving labor demand for young girls (by investing in water wells or child-care centers), offering free lunches, and encouraging female enrollment through all-girls schools or targeted scholarship programs (Hill and King, 1993; Glewwe, 1994; Bradshaw and Fuller, 1996). School quality and student assessment processes can influence enrollment demand, as well as the extent to which girls are encouraged to achieve at high levels. In one study from Kenya, more than a third of all girls achieving in the bottom quartile dropped out of secondary school because of pregnancy, compared with just one-seventh of the top students (Division of Family Health, 1988, cited in Bledsoe and Cohen, 1993). Distance to school and the presence of female teachers also may encourage higher school attainment among young females (DiStefano, 1993; Fuller and Clarke, 1994).

Third, parents' cultural commitments and social practices, extracted from a modernizing institutional environment, may further explain variability in female school attainment. A variety of cultural practices have received empirical attention in Africa: the argument that sexual and marriage practices are culturally determined, occasionally altered by modernizing values (Whiting and Whiting, 1991); the role of polygyny and resulting demands placed on young women (Lesthaeghe, 1989); bride price and the extent to which schooling is factored in; initiation rites and role conflicts for young females who are now culturally ordained as "adults"; and the role of kin, not only the husband and wife, in making reproductive decisions (see Bledsoe and Cohen, 1993; Hyde, 1993).

Locally Situating the Household Model

How can we situate the family within variable local contexts to better explain girls' school attainment? A family-economy model has emerged recently in sociology. This model situates the household's actions within (1) local economic demands and (2) more localized social or cultural commitments that stem from a shared set of evolving institutions, at times situated within a common ethnic history. The household is still seen partly in neoclassical terms as a social collective that actively seeks to optimize its members' welfare, not dissimilar to

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

a neoclassical model similar to Becker's (1976). But the family's "rationality" and opportunities are set by both local labor demands and institutional norms, and the family is seen as mediating these macro forces in allocating children's time between work and schooling.

How has this model—attempting to balance economic and social forces—been applied to the question of school attainment at the child level? As an example, the new family-economy model has helped explain an early contradiction in the school attainment literature: as societies industrialized from an agricultural or commercial base, enrollment rates often grew most rapidly in rural areas, not within industrializing centers where neoclassical theory accurately predicted higher economic returns to more schooling (Fishlow, 1966). In the United States, the historical evidence on household decision making shows that parents took into account immediate labor demands and income opportunities, not longer-term optimization or human capital strategies. Urban parents could move their children into factory or early service jobs, pulling them out of school to advance the household's immediate welfare. In rural areas, children experienced more discretionary time between planting and harvest seasons. This economic dynamic interacted with rural parents' Calvinist commitment to formal education, boosting secondary school attainment levels for girls and boys above those observed in urban centers (Walters and O'Connell, 1988). These family-economy theorists emphasize the state's contextual role in expanding the supply of schooling, reducing private costs, and regulating child labor—factors that boosted school attainment (Walters and James, 1992).

We recently extended the family-economy framework to explain rising female school attainment observed in Botswana villages since independence (Fuller et al., 1995a). Two major findings emerged from this study.

First, economic dynamics mediated by the household must be culturally situated and seen in gender-specific terms. Daughters were more likely to persist further through secondary school, for instance, when the number of household chores they were assigned was closer to the number assigned to sons. The presence of younger children and additional child-care obligations contributed to adolescent daughters' greater propensity to leave school. We also found a tendency to stay in school longer among daughters in father-absent households in the two southernmost villages, those located closest to the South African job market. While not always statistically significant, this finding is consistent with Schultz's (1990) report that when mothers serve as the household head, resources for schooling are allocated more equally to daughters. Studying several African societies, Lloyd and Blanc (1996) found that school attainment for both sons and daughters was higher in female-headed households, after taking into account economic factors (including generally lower income levels).2

2  

The presence and authority of the father also have implications for the mother's relative power over fertility decision making, as discussed by LeVine et al. (1994a) and Mburugu (1994).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Our second major finding was that mothers' attributes and social demands helped explain how far their daughters went in secondary school, again after taking into account the household's economic characteristics (within a survival analysis framework). In these Botswana villages, variability in the mother's schooling, assessed literacy level, perceived utility of formal education, family planning practices, and childrearing objectives all contributed to her daughter's school attainment. As posited by the new family-economy model, the discretionary time afforded by the economic context and parents' allocation of children's time between work and school contributed to daughters' school attainment.

Next, we clarify how the family-economy model can be applied to variable regions and ethnic groups within South Africa. We then assess empirically how household-level factors help explain why girls' school attainment varies among poor black families. This family-level analysis reveals cross-ethnic and regional differences in female school attainment, leading us back to the institution-level force of school supply and action by local states. We turn first to a consideration of how economic and social forces, observed within the household, can be more clearly conceptualized.

South Africa: Explaining Local Variation In Girls' School Attainment

Poor Families Mediating Economic and Social Linkages

The family-economy model posits that as parents consider the utility of keeping their children in school, they operate from preferences and anticipated streams of monetary benefits. Yet these "preferences" are viewed as stemming from variable economic demands and institutional norms, observable within the household, that pertain to childrearing aims and commitments to schooling. Parents attend to these (variable) local economic and social demands on the basis of the material and human resources they can draw from the environment. The family's linkages to the economic and social context vary in character across local regions. For example, in historically diverse and balkanized societies, such as South Africa, ethnic membership frequently corresponds to the family's regional location or designated "homeland," a point to which we will return.

Economic Linkages

Borrowing from the neoclassical household model, sociologists have emphasized the importance of economic resources and labor demands as parents allocate their children's time between work and school. Families are situated within specific labor structures that provide variable levels of income and job opportunities. These labor demands may compete for youths' time that otherwise would be available for schooling. Under the family-economy model, the resources and

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

demands inherent in the organization of work are augmented by state action, especially government's ability to legitimate school attendance, rather than fulltime work, as the norm for youths (Horan and Hargis, 1991; Walters and James, 1992). In our empirical model of daughters' school attainment, we include the household's variable economic resources and indicators of labor demand.

Social Linkages

The desire to go beyond macrostructural explanations of family decision making has renewed interest in situating children within a local social or cultural network. Anthropologists, of course, have long been focused on the situational norms and cultural models that guide childrearing and early socialization (Ogbu, 1978; Whiting and Whiting, 1991; LeVine et al., 1994). Rather than focusing on the content of socialization, however, Coleman (1988) examines the basic architecture of social relations, especially levels of obligation and trust within the family, and how these normative obligations may influence children's propensity to stay in school and achieve at higher levels. Under his construction of "social capital," he delineates structural features of the family that he and Schneider relate empirically to children's school attainment (Schneider and Coleman, 1993). The presence of parents or kin and their obligatory expectations are posited to constrain (or advance) children's school attainment levels through a number of mechanisms: the absence of one parent, a mother who works outside the home, a greater number of siblings, little talk at home about the child's life or schoolwork, and parents' low expectations and lack of pressure on the child to go on to college (Coleman, 1990:595). The presence of parents and the pressure they place on children to do well in school have in turn been linked to the household economy. Astone and McLanahan (1991), for instance, detail how working single parents spend less time supervising their children's homework or discussing their school lives.

This framework assumes that family-level linkages offer social resources to children: moral encouragement and specific strategies for doing well in school. Household economists are trying to incorporate the social capital construct, defining parental time as a resource or an investment made in children's development (Haveman and Wolfe, 1995:1836). As originally coined by Loury (1977), the term "social capital" referred to social linkages and obligations that enhance (or constrain) initial entry and advancement in the job market. Yet certain social linkages and obligations place social demands on children that pull them out of school. This is especially so in impoverished contexts where secondary schooling is not a fully legitimated institution, including developing-country settings where girls' school attendance is not taken for granted. The dampening effect of fathers' presence on their daughters' school attendance in Botswana, for example, may be due to domestic and marital obligations imposed by the father (see also Lloyd and Blanc, 1996).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

A second element of the social capital construct—the content of social obligations and expectations between parent and daughter—has yet to be specified or related to female school attainment. While endorsement of the modern school is acquired from a modernizing institutional environment, it is manifest and observable within the household (Caldwell, 1986; United Nations, 1995). We take modest steps here to assess whether observable social resources and social demands placed on daughters, stemming from their parents' education and literacy levels, contribute to daughters' school attainment in South Africa. In the discussion, we return to what little is known about the content of these evolving social expectations.

Variability Among Poor Provinces and Households

The above intrafamily dynamics may be conditioned by the regional economic and institutional context in which the household is situated. Given its history of apartheid and racist migration controls, South Africa shows significant variation across regions and ethnic groups in the strength of regional economies, rates of father absence, and maternal schooling levels (see also Thomas, this volume). We focus on variability among regions populated by black ("African") families. Population growth rates, for instance, currently range from 2.6 to 3.9 percent in regions populated by Xhosa versus North Sotho and Venda communities (Erasmus, 1994). The separation of black ethnic groups into "homelands" also led to variability in the availability and quality of secondary schooling.

Outside white communities, South African families suffer from extreme levels of poverty. Fifty-three percent of all South Africans currently live below the poverty line, recently established as US$97 in monthly household expenditures per capita (1993 prices),3 and blacks comprise 94 percent of this total. Indeed, two-thirds of all blacks, totaling 21 million adults and children, live in poverty. About two-thirds of all poor households are located in the three provinces on which our analysis focuses: the Eastern Cape (populated primarily by Xhosa speakers), KwaZulu/Natal (Zulu speakers), and the Northern Transvaal Province (North Sotho, Venda, and smaller groups). Figure 7-1 shows locations. Almost 70 percent of all female-headed households subsist below the poverty line, as compared with 44 percent of families with a resident father. Note that the old provincial boundaries were still in effect in 1993.

Secondary school enrollment rates are much lower among youths living in poverty. For households in the first and second poorest quintiles, just 46 and 57 percent, respectively, of children aged 13-17 are enrolled in school. In contrast,

3  

The poverty line is based on the 40th percentile of all households, using household income per adult equivalent, adjusting for family composition. Data and exchange rates are for 1993 (Reconstruction and Development Programme, 1995).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

FIGURE 7-1 Map of South Africa.

this rate is 83 percent for families in the most affluent quintile.4 Among the poor, just one-fifth have electricity, and almost half use wood as their main source of energy. South Africa's infant mortality rate remains at 53 per 1,000 live births; the total fertility rate stands at 4.1 (Erasmus, 1994; Reconstruction and Development Programme, 1995).5

Variability Across Regional Contexts

Our analysis focuses on girls' school attainment among the largest black ethnic groups. We begin by focusing on the context and attributes of the three

4  

The percentage of females enrolled in secondary schools exceeds that of males in most provinces. In the old black homeland areas in 1990, 58 percent of all grade 10 students who sat for the matriculation exam were females; females comprised just over half of all who passed the national exam. But relatively few black women enter a college or university. At the University of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand University, African females comprise just 9 and 7 percent of total enrollment, respectively (Truscott, 1994).

5  

White and colored populations are relatively affluent, compared with African families. But income inequality is stark: the richest 10 percent of all households, comprising just 6 percent of the population, accounts for 40 percent of all consumption. The lowest 40 percent, representing 53 percent of the population, accounts for less than 10 percent of total consumption (Reconstruction and Development Programme, 1995).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

most populous communities: Zulu, Xhosa, and North Sotho speakers. Table 7-1 presents descriptive statistics for the three groups and for the respective province within which the majority of each resides. "Sample count" refers to the number of households for which data were reported for a mother and daughter pair, that is the eldest daughter still resident in the household, age 11-25. Our subsample, stemming from a 1993 national probability sample, equaled 1,503 households, including households belonging to one of the five largest black groups and reporting household consumption levels at or below two times the poverty line (which included over 90 percent of all sampled households from these ethnic groups).6

Mean per capita income for 1988 across the three provinces was uniformly low but variable. The Northern Transvaal province showed the lowest income level, equaling just US$319 (1988 exchange rate and prices), compared with $841 in KwaZulu/Natal. Per capita income averaged $1,116 nationally. An estimated 61 percent of all Zulus live below the poverty line, versus 92 percent of Xhosas and 83 percent of North Sothos.

Despite a more rural and weaker economy than the other two provinces, North Sotho adults display similar school attainment levels, which may historically have been specific to males. In 1993, the proportion of adults who had completed secondary school equaled 13.4 percent among North Sothos, versus 10.8 percent among Zulu households. Young adolescents in North Sotho communities currently display much higher rates of persistence through secondary school: in 1993, 54 percent of all children who began grade 1` had persisted to grade 11, whereas this figure equaled just 26 and 11 percent, respectively,7 among Zulu and Xhosa youths. Our earlier analysis showed no literacy advantage among young North Sotho males or females, and the lower level of selectivity associated with lower dropout rates probably contributes to a lower matric pass rate among North Sotho secondary graduates (28 versus 43 percent for Zulu graduates; see Fuller et al., 1995b).

Household and Daughter Sample

The attributes of young females, shown in Table 7-1 for eldest daughters residing in sampled households differ across the three ethnic groups. The percentage of females enrolled in school ranged from about 60 percent and 57

6  

These data are from a national probability sample from 360 randomly selected clusters that yielded data on 8,848 households nationwide. The sampling plan is detailed in Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (1994). Gender-related analyses of school attainment and assessed literacy levels appear in Fuller et al. (1995b).

7  

For North Sotho communities, grade 12 enrollment counts are actually higher than those for grade 11, as youths reportedly stay in school to sit repeatedly for the matriculation exam. This rise in grade 12 enrollments is not observed in Zulu or Xhosa communities overall.

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

TABLE 7-1 Characteristics of Three Major Black Ethnic Groups by Principal Home Province, 1988-1993

Characteristic

Zulu Speakers

KwaZulu/Natal Province

Xhosa Speakers

Eastern Cape Province

No. Sotho Speakers

No. Transvaal Province

Population (1993)

Total population (millions)

9.1

7.0

7.4

5.8

3.7

5.0

% in "home province"

74

 

76

 

78

 

Sample count (households)

519

421

381

340

261

219

% in "home province"

81

 

85

 

82

 

Contextual Conditions

Per capita income in 1988 Rand

 

1,910

 

1,358

 

725

(US$)

 

($841)

 

($598)

 

($319)

Annual population growth rate (1985-1993)

 

2.8

 

2.6

 

3.9

% population in povertya

61

53

92

78

83

77

Dependency ratio

 

2.3

 

3.7

 

4.8

% households with absent fathers

 

14

 

31

 

28

% labor force female

 

54

 

56

 

59

% adults who have completed secondary school

10.8

 

9.0

 

13.4

 

% pupils who persist to grade 11b

26

 

11

 

54

 

Matric exam pass ratec

43

 

44

 

28

 

Literacy index, adults aged 19-34

5.3

 

5.2

 

 

Sampled Eldest Daughters (n = 1,389)d

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mean age (years)

19.6

 

18.9

 

19.7

 

% in school aged 11-25e

45.9

 

57.0

 

59.8

 

School attainment if out of school (years)f

5.6

 

5.9

 

6.7

 

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Characteristics

Zulu Speakers

Xhosa Speakers

No. Sotho Speakers

Sampled Households (n = 1,389)

Monthly household expenditures (1993 Rand)e

1,331

780

920

Females fetch water (% of households)e

29

29

53

Children in household under age 18e

4.1

3.7

3.8

Males in household over age 18 e,ge

1.5

1.1

1.2

Mother's school attainment (years)e,g

3.6

3.8

2.8

Father's school attainment (years)

3.7

3.3

3.7

% mothers in clerical or laborer jobse

22

16

15

NOTES:

a Poverty figures calculated from 1993 household survey for provinces and homelands within provinces. Figure for Xhosa-speaking households pertains to Transkei. Corresponding figure for Ciskei equals 73 percent. Poverty line is established at monthly expenditures of 301 Rand per adult equivalent. In 1993 prices, this equals US$97 per month.

b Figures are for homeland school departments. Percentage for Xhosas applies to the larger Transkei homeland. Percentage for the smaller Ciskei region equals 37 percent.

c Percentage pass rates for 1990 in the homeland areas of KwaZulu, Ciskei, and Transkei combined, and Lebowa.

d Includes daughters from the five principal ethnic groups—Zulu, Xhosa, North Sotho, South Sotho, and Tswana—with deletion of missing data by each individual variable.

e For sampled households and daughters, MANOVA tests were performed to assess differences among ethnic groups. p < .01 or stronger.

f For sampled households and daughters, MANOVA tests were performed to assess differences among ethnic groups. p < .05.

g Among sampled households, many North Sotho mothers (42 percent) reported they had completed no schooling. Median school attainment (in years) for Zulus, Xhosas, and North Sothos was 3, 3, and 1, respectively.

SOURCES: Education Foundation (1993), Erasmus (1994), Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (1994), Verwey and Munzhedzi (1994), Fuller et al. (1995b), Reconstruction and Development Programme (1995).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

percent among North Sothos and Xhosas, respectively, to about 46 percent among Zulus. Labor demands also vary: 53 percent of all North Sotho households require female members to carry wood or water, versus just 29 percent of Zulu and Xhosa households. Zulus have larger families, with an average of 4.1 children under age 18 residing in the household, as compared with 3.8 for North Sotho and 3.7 for Xhosa families.

Importantly, mothers' school attainment for this sample is lowest in North Sotho households, just 2.8 years on average. Thus the school attainment advantage among young North Sotho females appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon, perhaps attributable to educational expansion in the old North Sotho homeland of Lebowa over the two decades following the 1976 Soweto uprising (Fuller et al., 1995b).

Ethnic Differences in Female Attainment

We now assess empirically how family economic and social factors influence daughters' school attainment across the five ethnic groups in our subsample (including Tswana and South Sotho households in addition to the three groups discussed above). We model a discrete-time hazard function that assesses whether and when young females leave school. First, however, we focus on descriptive differences in female school attainment across the five ethnic groups.

Figure 7-2 displays the percentage of females age 13-24 (n = 1,129) who were still enrolled in school at the time of the survey (1993-1994) for the three major black groups discussed previously. The North Sotho advantage relative to Zulu and Xhosa enrollment rates depends on the daughter's age. The 5-year secondary school cycle officially includes youths aged 13-17, but many enrolled students are over age 17. Among those aged 17-18, the enrollment rate of North Sotho females is 10 percent higher than that of Zulu females. Among those age 19-20, the North Sotho rate is 59 percent, versus 29 percent for Zulus and 48 percent for Xhosas.

Figure 7-3 focuses only on those girls who had left school by the time of the survey and reported their school attainment. Recognizing that right-censoring of cases is occurring, here too we see significant ethnic differences in school attainment levels for daughters: 5.6 and 5.9 years, respectively, for Zulu and Xhosa females, versus 6.7 years for North Sotho females (p < .05).8

For many young females, leaving school may coincide with becoming pregnant. Our hazard-rate models enable us to examine whether pregnancy substitutes for the effect of family-level factors in estimating the likelihood of leaving school. Figure 7-4 helps us understand descriptively the relationship between pregnancy and leaving school. Toward the end of the normal school-going age

8  

Note that the difference in the mean age of sampled daughters is not statistically significant, ranging between 18.9 and 19.7 years of age (Table 7-1).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

FIGURE 7-2 Percentage of girls in school by age and ethnic group. NOTE: For Zulu, n = 321; Xhosa, n = 331; North Sotho, n = 201.

FIGURE 7-3 Average years of school completed for girls by ethnic group. (NOTE: Sample restricted to girls, aged 11-25, who have left school. For Zulu, n = 177; Xhosa, n = 138; North Sotho, n = 85.)

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

FIGURE 7-4 Percentage of girls experiencing a pregnancy by age and school enrollment. (NOTE: For girls who are still in school, n = 794; For girls who have left school, n = 709.)

(17-18), very few girls who were still enrolled had become pregnant; in contrast, just over half of all out-of-school females had experienced one pregnancy. Importantly, as the incidence of pregnancy becomes significant for young females, after age 19, many are still enrolled in school, having returned to or remaining in secondary school or post-secondary education.

How Family-Economy And Social Factors Influence Girls' School Attainment

We now examine how the household's economic and social attributes—particularly its resources and demands pertaining to daughters—help explain whether and when young females leave school. We rely on survey measures of the family economy and the household's social architecture. We also examine the strength of ethnic differences in explaining variations in school attainment, focusing on the three largest black groups. The discussion includes qualitative evidence to supplement the survey findings.

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Page 197

Household Attributes That May Influence Girls' School Attainment

Economic Resources

Within poor South African communities, families vary greatly in whether and how members are linked to the wage sector. To the extent that the family earns more cash income from wages or remittances from kin members, resources are available to cover school expenses (for books, uniforms, and combi fares in urban townships). Three survey measures were available to assess how basic resources are related to daughters' school attainment: monthly expenditures as reported by the household respondent; an index of durable goods owned by the family (refrigerator, bicycle, telephone, and electric kettle); and whether the family had credit and owed money for purchased items to a local shop. Monthly expenditures were moderately correlated with the durables index (r = .43). Earlier we found in Botswana that durables and housing quality measures, reflecting accumulated wealth or an investment attitude, were more consistently related to daughters' school attainment than were short-term consumption measures (Fuller et al., 1995a).9

Economic Demands

Labor demands faced by daughters can stem from adults' own involvement in the wage, informal cash, or agrarian sectors and from the family's demographic structure. It is often assumed that women's income from wages or informal-sector involvement will be related to household consumption levels. We found no correlation, however, between the mother's employment in a clerical or laborer job (including domestic work) and monthly household expenditures (r = .03 for both coefficients). This finding may be due to the low incidence of maternal employment (22 percent of Zulu and 15 percent of North Sotho mothers) or simply to sporadic and low wage income.10

Labor demands may be greater for eldest daughters whose mothers are employed outside the household: with mothers away at work, domestic duties may fall more heavily on the daughter's shoulders. This is one of our principal reasons for focusing our study on the eldest daughter. As discussed earlier, we included a direct measure of whether females are required to carry water or wood (Table 7-1). We also used measures to capture the fact that adolescent daughters

9  

The credit-linkage variable was modestly correlated with household expenditures (r = .21), but not with the durables index. Exploratory analyses also included remittance income, but this variable did not contribute to the explanatory power of the models.

10  

We have also restricted variation on all predictor and school attainment variables by deleting black households from the full national sample with incomes exceeding two times the poverty line (they represent just 6 percent of all black households sampled, 366 of 6,167 families).

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

often must care for younger siblings and cousins in the compound (Bozzoli, 1991) and that daughters likely feel greater labor demand in families with more and younger children. We originally used three such measures: the number of children under age 18 residing in the compound, the age of the youngest child, and the difference in age between the youngest child and the eldest daughter. The latter predictor proved to be highly collinear with the first, however, and was dropped. We also included the age of the second-eldest resident sibling who might relieve labor demands placed on the eldest daughter.

Social Resources

Coleman's (1988, 1990) delineation of how children may benefit from social linkages that raise school attainment represents one theoretical framework. Coleman stops short, however, of specifying the character and meaning of intra-household obligations, expectations, and forms of supervision over domestic chores and school work—social processes that undoubtedly vary across and within ethnic groups. As a first step, one can assess whether the presence of adult actors and social linkages helps predict daughters' school attainment levels (see also Schneider and Coleman, 1993). We included the number of women and men residing in the household as indicators of the intensity of adult supervision. We also examined whether the household received in-kind services from kin or friends living outside the household, including child-care support, repairs in the compound, meals, and other forms of nonmonetary support. Among Zulu and North Sotho families, 20 percent reported receiving such support, versus just 7 percent for all Xhosa households. Our final social-resource measure is whether the household contributed to a local church. Among Zulu households, 35 percent reported doing so, compared with 27 percent for both North Sotho and Xhosa families. Contributions were modestly related to overall household expenditures (r = .21).

Social Demands

The social-capital construct, derived from North American settings, assumes that a stronger presence of adults will increase children's school attendance. However, initial evidence from African settings, cited above, suggests that a father's absence may actually contribute to higher school attainment among daughters. Almost half (48 percent) of all black individuals live in female-headed households (Fuller et al., 1995b).11 We also postulate that the mother's

11  

Among sampled Zulu households with a resident daughter age 11-25, 16 percent reported having an absent father. The incidence was 20 percent for North Sothos and 21 percent for Xhosas. The household study included a liberal definition of household ''residency," including persons who have lived in the compound or homestead at least 15 days out of the past year, share meals from a common source, or contribute to a common resource pool.

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

and father's schooling levels lead to differing social demands for daughters, including the way their social roles are defined within the household and the relative time allocated to work versus school. Qualitative studies in Botswana, Kenya, and South Africa substantiate this assumption (Bozzoli, 1991; LeVine et al., 1994b). The importance of mothers' schooling levels for their daughters' school attainment has been established in several African countries; evidence on the importance of fathers' education in shaping pro-education social demands is less consistent (Hill and King, 1993). Among our sampled low-income households, maternal and paternal school attainment levels were moderately correlated (r = .43).

Our preliminary analyses revealed that the basic family-level model did not predict well whether the eldest daughter had experienced a pregnancy, with the exception of one explanatory variable—mother's level of schooling. Among eldest daughters, aged 11-25, who had left school, 53 percent reported having experienced at least one pregnancy; just 14 percent of these females were aged 19 or younger. Among daughters still attending school at the time of the survey, 15 percent had experienced at least one pregnancy.12 Finally, we added pregnancy as an exogenous predictor of school attainment, assessing the extent to which pregnancy substitutes for the other predictors of female attainment.13

Surviving Secondary School: Explaining Which Girls Leave School and When

To assess the influence of the above family-economy and social factors on when young females leave school, we constructed discrete-time hazard models (Tuma and Hannan, 1984; Singer and Willett, 1993). Doing so involved estimating hazard functions for the 1,103 daughters aged 13-24 for whom complete data were available. This form of survival analysis assesses whether and when girls leave school, taking into account the fact that many observations are right-cen-

12  

Sampled mothers (of eldest daughters) reported four pregnancies on average (median). Of daughters who had been pregnant, 24 percent had experienced one infant death; the child of an additional 15 percent had died between the ages of I and 5. Maternal education was related to the number of pregnancies reported by the mother (r = -34), and the latter variable was related to the number of infant deaths (r = .41).

13  

Poor South African families are concentrated in rural areas. About 53 percent of the population resides in rural areas or outside of small towns; of these families, 74 percent live in poverty. In contrast, 41 percent of all urban families are impoverished. We found, however, that rural location made no consistent difference in explaining daughters' school attainment for our low-income sample. This finding may be due to overall poverty levels or to the fact that many rural households are linked to the wage sector through jobs in towns or remittances. Fewer than one-third of the sampled families had access to lands for crops or grazing. The representation of rural families in our sample approximated the national average; just over half the entire sample was living in traditional rural structures of mud, waddle, or daub.

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

sored: many girls will have left school after the survey was conducted, and a fair number of young females who dropped out of school because of pregnancy will have reentered later on.

Some selection bias may occur in choosing the eldest resident daughter on whom we have focused our analysis. We had three reasons for making this design decision. First, eldest daughters are at the age of greatest risk for leaving school: during the secondary-school years and (for a limited number of female matriculating graduates) the initial years of post-secondary education. Figure 7-5, panel A, shows that 88 percent of daughters (again from low-income families) complete primary school, corresponding to grade 4 (the old Standard 5). As girls progress through secondary school, survival rates begin to decline: the hazard or probability of leaving school increases for each successive year. Just half of all young females complete Form 4 and their matriculation exam (indicated by grade level 10). About 32 percent complete any post-secondary education, including teacher education (indicated as grade level 11). Panel B of Figure 7-5 reports the hazard rate (probability) of girls leaving school in any particular period given that they were in school during the prior period.

Our second reason for focusing on eldest daughters is that they are most likely to be subjected to labor demands by adult household members, especially if the mother is employed outside the home in the wage sector. In such cases, the social obligation of providing childcare and performing other domestic tasks linked to siblings is assumed to be significant.

The third reason is that the most complete data were available on resident children. The household interview contained no questions on children who had left the home or were fostered out. Countering possible concerns about selection bias, we found that children's outmigration rates were not significantly different across black ethnic groups.14 In our initial analyses, we also included a control variable for the proportion of children who had migrated from the household, but this predictor was never significant.

Very little information is available on the differences between the school experiences of South African children who remain resident and those who are fostered out to other households. Without such data, it is difficult to estimate how selection bias may operate in the present analysis. Future work could focus on the school attainment and literacy levels of these two groups. Yet modeling of such educational events, based on the features of these two types of households, becomes very complex and could not be supported by this data set.

14  

A significantly greater number of daughters age 11-25 remained different. resident in Zulu households (1.8) relative to North Sotho daughters (1.6). But this finding is more strongly related to differences in family size than to outmigration rates, which were not statistically

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

FIGURE 7-5 Survival and hazard plots of when girls leave school.

Influence of Family-Economy and Household-Level Social Factors

Results from our hazard-rate models appear in Table 7-2. We first report a baseline model that simply includes period dummies for each school attainment point. Model 2 then adds the family-economy predictors suggested by the theory, as specified above for the South African context. Note that we are estimating the

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

TABLE 7-2 Estimating the Hazard Function of When Daughters Leave School: The Influence of Family-Economy and Social Factors (n = 1,103 daughters, parameter estimates and standard errors reported)

Independent Variables

[1] Baseline model

[2] Adding economic factors

[3] Adding social factors

[4] Adding ethnic membership

[5] Adding pregnancy control

Baseline period dummies

Year 1

-4.57a

-3.89a

-3.09a

-2.87a

-2.89a

(0.30)

(0.31)

(0.35)

(0.36)

(0.37)

Year 2

-3.91a

-3.22a

-2.31a

-2.10a

-2.10a

(0.22)

(0.23)

(0.29)

(0.30)

(0.31)

Year 3

-3.75a

-3.06a

-2.03a

-1.84a

-1.83a

(0.21)

(0.22)

(0.30)

(0.30)

(0.31)

Year 4

-3.56a

-2.86a

-1.71a

-1.53a

-1.51a

(0.20)

(0.21)

(0.29)

(0.31)

(0.32)

Year 5

-3.02a

-2.29a

-1.05a

-0.87b

-0.84b

(0.16)

(0.18)

(0.28)

(0.30)

(0.30)

Year 6

-2.77a

-2.02a

-.67c

-.49

-.46

(0.15)

(0.17)

(0.29)

(0.30)

(0.31)

Year 7

-2.78a

-2.00a

-.52

-.37

-.33

(0.16)

(0.19)

(0.31)

(0.32)

(0.33)

Year 8

-2.53a

-1.72a

-.12

.02

.07

(0.17)

(0.19)

(0.32)

(0.33)

(0.34)

Year 9

-2.56a

-1.73a

-.03

.11

.14

(0.20)

(0.22)

(0.35)

(0.36)

(0.37)

Year 10

-1.08a

-11

1.75a

1.94a

2.04a

(0.13)

(0.18)

(0.34)

(0.35)

(0.36)

Year 11

-56

.64

2.55a

2.71a

2.81a

(0.62)

(0.67)

(0.77)

(0.78)

(0.80)

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Independent Variables

[2] Adding economic factors

[3] Adding social factors

[4] Adding ethnic membership

[5] Adding pregnancy control

Economic resources and demands

Household expenditures

-.0007a

-.0004a

-.0006a

.0005a

(.0001)

(.0001)

(.0001)

(.0001)

Household durables index

-.08

-.008

.05

-.002

(0.09)

(0.09)

(0.10)

(0.09)

Family has loan from shop

-.38c

-.52b

-.60a

-.55b

(0.16)

(0.17)

(0.18)

(0.17)

Family receives in-kind services

-.12

-.06

.04

.01

(0.16)

(0.17)

(0.03)

(0.18)

Females collect wood and/or water

.08

.15

.24b

.16

(0.08)

(0.08)

(0.08)

(0.09)

Mother holds a clerical job

.17

.63a

.54b

50b

(0.17)

(0.18)

(0.19)

(0.19)

Mother holds a laborer or domestic job

.08

.38c

.33

.34

(0.18)

(0.18)

(0.19)

(0.19)

Social resources and demands

Mother's school attainment

 

-.08a

-09a

-.08a

 

(0.02)

(0.02)

(0.02)

Father's school attainment

-.05c

-.04c

-.06b

 

 

(0.02)

(0.02)

(0.02)

Father absent from household

-.34c

-.30

-.31d

 

 

(0.17)

(0.17)

(0.17)

Age of target daughter

-.07a

-.06

-.09a

 

 

(0.02)

(0.02)

(0.02)

Age of second-oldest daughter

-.01

-.01

-.005

 

 

(0.01)

(0.01)

(0.01)

Age of youngest daughter

-.11a

-.12a

-.07a

 

 

(0.02)

(0.02)

(0.02)

Number of resident females

> age 18

.17b

.16b

.10

 

 

(0.05)

(0.05)

(0.05)

Number of resident males

> age 18

.02

-.005

-.01

 

 

(0.06)

(0.06)

(0.06)

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Independent Variables

[1] Baseline model

[2] Adding economic factors

[3] Adding social factors

[4] Adding ethnic membership

[5] Adding pregnancy control

Ethnic membership

North Sotho

 

 

 

-1.15a

-1.09a

 

 

 

 

(0.19)

(0.19)

South Sotho

 

 

 

-.24

-.21

 

 

 

(0.21)

(0.21)

Xhosa

 

 

 

-.36c

-.30d

 

 

 

(0.16)

(0.16)

Tswana

 

 

 

-.09

-.07

 

 

 

(0.20)

(0.20)

Ever pregnant [control]

 

 

 

 

1.08a

 

 

 

 

(0.14)

Full equation

 

 

 

 

 

-2 log likelihood

2,730.49

2,601.84

2,423.81

2,382.00

2,319.00

Change in df

7

9

4

1

Decrement toχ2

128.65

178.03

41.81

63.00

Critical value

14.07

16.92

9.49

3.84

NOTES: The -2 log likelihood without covariates = 10670.31. The base for ethnic membership predictors is the largest black group, Zulu.

a p < .001

b p < .01

c p < .05

d p < .07

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

risk of leaving school; therefore, negative coefficients indicate that the predictor lower the risk of dropping out. Household expenditures and access to credit (family has a loan from a neighborhood shop) significantly lower the daughter's risk of leaving school. Recall that all these families have quite low incomes. Yet consumption levels show variations that have implications for which daughters stay in school longer.

Model 3 adds the social factors that may influence female school attainment. Overall, these social factors exert a greater influence on reducing the model's chi-square statistic than do the family-economy factors (bottom of Table 7-2). Particularly influential in reducing the risk of leaving school are mother's and father's school attainment levels, father's absence from the home, target daughter's age, and age of the youngest daughter. As suggested earlier, the father-absent effect tends to confirm Schultz's (1990) finding that female-headed households, despite lower income levels, generally allocate resources more equitably to daughters relative to sons than do households headed by the father.

In Model 3 we also now observe significant effects from the mother's involvement in the wage sector: such involvement places daughters at greater risk of leaving school, perhaps because these daughters face greater labor demands within the household. Girls are also more likely to leave school if more adult females are resident in the household. This finding suggests either that adult females do not share the labor demands of the household, or that these families perpetuate more traditional social roles for young females, including less integration in the female labor market.

Model 4 adds another social factor: the daughter's ethnic membership. Girls in North Sotho communities are much less likely to leave school. Xhosa females display a lower risk of dropping out as well, although the difference is less than for North Sothos (Zulus form the base group). These patterns are consistent with descriptive results reported earlier (Figure 7-3). Thus the economic and social factors studied at the family level are not substituting for these striking ethnic differences.

In Model 5 we add the control predictor indicating whether the young female has ever experienced a pregnancy. This factor understandably raises the risk of leaving school. However, it substitutes for just two earlier observed effects: the number of resident adult females in the household and (partially) Xhosa ethnic membership. The former substitution effect supports the argument that households with more resident females either face more limited job opportunities or hold more traditional beliefs about gender roles.

Comparative Risks of Leaving School

Figure 7-6 presents comparative hazards of leaving school for eldest daughters situated in different kinds of households. Panel A shows a significantly higher likelihood of completing the matric (10 percent lower) or completing

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×
Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

FIGURE 7-6 Comparative hazards of leaving school by social characteristics.

some post-secondary education (11 percent lower) for daughters whose mothers had completed primary school relative to those whose mothers had no schooling. Note that these hazards are cumulative across time periods. Thus, in survival terms, 51 percent of daughters whose mothers completed primary school had completed some post-secondary education, versus 35 percent of those whose mothers had no schooling. Panel B shows the modest advantage of daughters in father-absent households—an 8-point gap for daughters who enter post-secondary education. In survival terms, 75 percent of daughters in father-absent households completed secondary school and the matric, versus just 67 percent of those in father-present households.

Ethnic differences in school attainment are illustrated in Panel C. The probability that North Sotho females will leave school after matric is 15 points lower than that for Zulu daughters. This gap rises to 21 points for Zulu and North Sotho daughters who enter post-secondary education. Overall, 67 percent of North Sotho daughters complete some post-secondary schooling, versus just 35 percent of Zulu females.

Does Ethnic Membership Mask Regional and Institution-Level Forces?

The ethnic differences discussed above return us to the theoretical question of how household and institution-level forces may together shape female school attainment. The household factors on which we have focused certainly help

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

TABLE 7-3 School Supply and Distinguishing Features of North Sotho Communitiesa

 

North Sotho Clusters [n = 16]

Other African Clusters [n = 113]

F value

Average number of secondary schools

1.1

0.7

4.14*

Percentage of clusters with tarmac roads

0%

24%

2.53ζ

Index of health care workersb

3.7

3.9

0.64

Percentage of clusters with resident doctor

13%

20%

1.11

a North Sotho communities are defined as those with more than 80 percent of households with North Sotho speakers. Overall multivariate analysis of variance is significant: F = 2.65, * p < .05, ζp <.10.

b Count of whether the cluster has a midwife, family planning, and/or health worker in a local clinic.

explain which daughters are more likely to be enrolled and how far they persist through school. Yet even after taking into account a variety of family-level economic and social factors, ethnic effects remain strong and significant. What is it about ethnic membership—or the region in which a group predominates—that affects levels of female school attainment?

One argument is that the availability of secondary schooling may vary across provinces in ways that help explain these ethnic effects. We assessed this possibility by drawing on community-level data collected in each of the local communities from which sampled households were randomly drawn. Our subsample of the five major black groups includes 136 local clusters with complete data. We split these clusters between those where the share of North Sotho households equaled or exceeded 80 percent versus 20 percent or less. The former group is located mostly in the Northern Transvaal province, primarily within the old Lebowa homeland. Table 7-3 compares North Sotho and other clusters.

We found that the average number of secondary schools located in North Sotho communities equaled 1.1, compared with 0.7 per local cluster in the other black communities, a statistically significant difference. Interestingly, North Sotho communities have less infrastructure in terms of tarmac roads and healthcare workers. But the greater supply of secondary schooling is clear as compared

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

with the other black locales. Future research should examine such contextual differences more deeply, especially given that government policy and investments can address these institutional factors.

Summary And Conclusions

We have seen how low-income South African families are far from homogeneous. Elements of the household's economy, social resources and demands, and ethnic experience vary significantly and in ways that explain daughters' school attainment levels. After summarizing our basic findings, we speak to how this kind of evidence can inform stronger designs for the program interventions of governments and international agencies.

Our findings are generally consistent with claims made by researchers who employ the new family-economy model. Even when restricting our analysis to low-income African households, we find that the family's financial strength—indicated by household expenditures and access to local credit—is positively related to the likelihood that eldest daughters remain in school and advance their school attainment. One important finding is that mothers' linkage to the formal wage sector may suppress their daughters' school attainment, perhaps because of the associated increase in domestic labor demand placed on the eldest daughter.

Taken together, these findings confirm a basic family-economy process whereby resources and labor demands are associated with daughters' school attainment. Attainment appears to be linked to immediate and short-term labor demands, not necessarily to long-term optimization or human-capital investment, as neoclassical economists would have it. Thus far it seems that economic or structural interventions, such as income supplements, scholarships, or strategies for relieving female labor demand, might effectively boost girls' school attainment.

We also find that social resources and demands placed on daughters contribute to female school attainment. The positive influence of father absence is consistent with earlier findings in several African societies (Fuller et al., 1995a; Lloyd and Blanc, 1996). The way this influence operates inside households deserves more attention, through both survey and ethnographic research. The influence of mothers' school attainment on daughter's attainment is not surprising, but the finding is notable given that we are focusing on impoverished black families. Ethnic membership is consistently telling for North Sothos, independently of the influence of family-economy factors. We also document the expected negative effect of becoming pregnant on daughters' school attainment levels. And it appears that many young females return to school after giving birth, providing an opportunity for more focused policy initiatives and interventions inside schools. Given the rising rate of adolescent pregnancy in some African societies (Bledsoe and Cohen, 1993), efforts to delay the age of first and

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

subsequent pregnancies for young females could effectively slow population growth in South Africa.

The strong influence of social resources and demands suggests that program interventions in some local regions and with some ethnic groups must focus on more than economic constraints and incentives. Where parents' own schooling levels are low, encouraging daughters to stay in school will be especially challenging. Influencing the attitudes of mothers alone may not be sufficient. When fathers are present in the household or rural labor demands are inextricably linked to daughters' social obligations, interventions might better be aimed at males at both the household and village levels.

Our analysis accents the higher school attainment levels found among North Sotho daughters, despite high rates of poverty and lower school attainment among older mothers. The more recent expansion of secondary education in North Sotho communities appears to be part of the key to understanding this advantage among young North Sotho females.

This finding highlights the sharp variations among regional and ethnic situations, even across low-income black communities. Families of the same ethnicity—be it Zulu, Tswana, or North Sotho—do share important individual and household-level attributes: language, family structure, and patterns of child socialization. But ''ethnicity" in South Africa also manifests shared local institutional histories, thanks to the apartheid regime's migration controls and forced segregation of black groups under homeland administrations. The arid and rural Northern Transvaal province, where the former Lebowa homeland for North Sothos is situated, has a depressed regional economy, even relative to other poor regions. We saw earlier how per capita income is 2.5 times higher in KwaZulu/ Natal than in the North. Among all North Sotho speakers, 83 percent live beneath the poverty line, versus 61 percent of Zulus. Father absenteeism is twice as high in the Northern Transvaal province, in part because of males' movement to stronger labor markets. Thus the economic context lowers the opportunity cost for females who remain in school. Job opportunities are few; many males are leaving the household. Females are left with the task of raising a growing number of young children, as population growth remains a point higher in the Northern Transvaal relative to KwaZulu/Natal—3.9 percent versus 2.8 percent per annum, respectively.

In addition to a shared economic context, particular ethnic groups have faced a distinct set of institutions over time. Demographers and anthropologists have tried to specify how changes in the institutional context are related to gains in maternal education, lower birth rates, and changed childrearing practices (Caldwell, 1986; LeVine et al., 1994a). But precisely how school, state, and church institutions act to legitimate female school attendance and novel fertility patterns remains a mystery. We do know that family demand for schooling is high in the Northern Transvaal province relative to other black communities. We reported earlier how a much higher percentage of North Sotho youths persist to

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

grade 11 as a proportion of entering grade 1 pupils. Part of this advantage is attributable to the variable actions of local governments. For example, within schools that fell under the pre-1994 Lebowa administration, 54 percent of all youths persisted into grade 9, versus just 21 percent of black students attending schools run by the national education department (Verwey and Munzhedzi, 1994).15 And prior research has revealed how school improvement efforts in the old Bophuthatswana bantustan have resulted in measurable gains in matric exam scores and literacy levels among young females (Education Foundation, 1993; Fuller et al., 1995b). It is the actions of local governments and institutions that make a difference.

Beyond secular action by the state, the Tswana and Sotho peoples of the Western and Northern Transvaal have been exposed to a common linguistic and religious history, one that may have affected female commitments to formal schooling over time. Of particular importance, missionaries from competing churches moved aggressively into the Transvaal during the mid-nineteenth century. Literacy came to be associated with one's faith and loyalty to the village church. To compete for members, churches continue to translate the Bible and other texts into indigenous languages (Hofmeyr, 1993). Mission and, eventually, government schools came to signal a new form of status for young women (see, e.g., Bozzoli, 1991).

We certainly have much to learn about how parents' beliefs and practices vary among households and in ways that contribute to daughters' school attainment levels. Clearly these micro household processes are rooted in parents' own schooling experience and the benefits of education they perceive. Yet our fundamental point is that the local economic situation and social institutions—contexts that differ across regions and ethnic groups in South Africa—further advance female school attainment.

International agencies continue to promulgate means by which female enrollment can be raised or fertility behaviors altered (e.g., Odaga and Heneveld, 1995). But in many African societies we have scarce empirical knowledge of variations in the actions of families that are situated within specific regional histories, institutional contexts, and ethnic experiences. Where institutional conditions vary beneficially—such as the greater supply of secondary schools in North Sotho communities—opportunities exist for policy makers to act with greater precision. But as long as development agencies and governments assume that universal factors constrain female school attainment, costly policies and school interventions may continue to yield disappointing results.

15  

In the larger Northern Transvaal province there are fewer than 3.0 residents for every one primary or secondary school student; this ratio is 3.7 in KwaZulu/Natal (calculated from data appearing in Verwey and Munzhedzi, 1994). Note that the Transvaal is now called Northern Province.

Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
×

Acknowledgments

The data analyzed in this chapter are from a household survey conducted in 1993-1994 by Francis Wilson and Pundy Pillay, University of Cape Town. Our work was supported by the World Bank with aid from the governments of Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway. Special thanks go to Neeta Sirur at the World Bank for organizing the overall project. We are grateful to Yisgedullish Amde and Carlo del Ninno for their advice and essential help with data management. Caroline Bledsoe, Linda Chisholm, Barney Cohen, Duncan Thomas, and two anonymous reviewers provided very helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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Suggested Citation:"7 Which Girls Stay in School? The Influence of Family Economy, Social Demands, and Ethnicity in South Africa." National Research Council. 1999. Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6272.
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This volume assesses the evidence, and possible mechanisms, for the associations between women's education, fertility preferences, and fertility in developing countries, and how these associations vary across regions. It discusses the implications of these associations for policies in the population, health, and education sectors, including implications for research.

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