Barcelona 2013
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| Abstract #429 - Educational Challenges | ||||
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Session: 35.1: Educational Challenges (Parallel) on Tuesday @ 14.30-16.00 in Auditorium Chaired by Authors: Presenting Author: Professor Mark Orkin - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa |
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| Additional Authors: | ||||
| Aim: In sub-Saharan Africa, orphanhood is associated with higher rates of non-enrolment, particularly for girls (Guo & Sherr, 2013). Non-enrolment and school dropout are associated with multiple negative lifetime outcomes for children, including increased rates of pregnancy and HIV-incidence. These pathways of risk are particularly severe for orphaned children. Within the region there has been increasing interest in cash transfers to improve school enrolment and reduce dropout, but to date no known studies have examined whether a state cash transfer programme has differential outcomes by gender and orphanhood status. | ||||
| Method / Issue: In 2009-12, a longitudinal panel study in South Africa interviewed 3,388 children aged 10-18. Four urban and rural health districts with high HIV-prevalence were randomly selected from two provinces. Within these, census enumeration areas were randomly selected, and door-to-door household sampling interviewed in all homes with a resident child. Children were interviewed again after one year, with 97% retention rate. Household receipt of child-focused grants (child support and/or foster care grant), child school enrolment and orphanhood status were measured using standardized instruments. Propensity score matching, with additional controlling for child age, was used in order to control for potential family-level, economic and location biases in grant receipt, followed by backwards-stepping logistic regression, testing for main effects of orphanhood, gender and social grants as well as potential two-way and three-way interaction effects. | ||||
| Results / Comments: Female orphans had a threefold risk of non-enrolment than all other groups (p<.001). Receipt of a child-focused grant halved non-enrolment for non-orphaned boys (5.1% to 2.5%) and girls (6.2% to 3.3%), and reduced non-enrolment by four and a half times for orphaned boys (5.6% to 1.2%) and by five and a half times for orphaned girls (13.5% reduced to 2.5%). Tests for interaction effects confirmed that the positive impact of child-focused state social welfare grants on enrolment was significantly greater for orphaned children who were female. | ||||
| Discussion: This finding underlines the particular importance of cash transfers for orphaned female children, a high-risk group for school dropout and subsequent HIV-infection. They also demonstrate clear benefits of a state-run, functionally non-conditional system of child-focused social welfare grants in preventing potential negative pathways for Southern Africa?s most vulnerable children. | ||||
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