This paper investigates whether the death of a parent during middle childhood (ages 7-8 to 11-12) has different effects on a child’s schooling and psychosocial outcomes when compared with death during adolescence (ages 11-12 to 14-15) in Ethiopia. The data come from three rounds of Young Lives longitudinal survey conducted in 2002, 2006, and 2009, which included a sample of 850 children across 20 sentinel sites in Ethiopia. Interestingly, the outcomes considered include education in terms of quantity (school enrolment) and quality (i.e. ability to read, write and numeracy), and also child subjective well-being (a child’s own evaluation of his or her life) as well as psychosocial characteristics such as a child‘s sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy.
The results showed that children who lost a mother in middle childhood (between ages 7–12) were about 33% less likely to attend school than children who did not experience the death of the mother. The death of a father, on the other hand did not have an impact on school enrolment. In terms of self-esteem, maternal orphans scored significantly lower than non-orphans. Not surprisingly, a parent’s death was also found to have a significant negative impact on a child’s sense of optimism about the future. Interestingly, in the case of a father’s death, although there is a negative impact on a child’s sense of optimism, a sense of agency went up as it is more likely that children are more involved in household decision making and contributing to household resources upon a father’s death. However, these effects were found to be short-term in nature and did not persist into adolescence. Children orphaned in middle childhood, though, were also found to engage in significantly more paid employment and self-employment by the age of 14-15. Maternal death in adolescence was found on the other hand to have no impact on any of the outcomes considered in the study, but the death of a father in adolescence had a significant negative impact on a number of outcomes, including school enrolment, a child’s sense of agency. It is also notable that care arrangements for maternal orphans changed significantly from what they were before the mother died.
The author suggests that one of the reasons that maternal orphans seem to suffer more in terms of school enrolment in the short run may be because many of them experience a change in their caregiver, with around 26% of the children who lost a mother in middle childhood cared for by a distant relative or non-relative when compared with 5% of non-orphans. The caregiver arrangement between orphans and non-orphans was not significantly different when a parent died during a child’s adolescence: over 90% of the children continued to be cared for by a close relative.
©Journal of African Economies