The Interplay between Poverty and Child Schooling in Pakistan: Evidence from Panel Data (2004-2010)

Abstract

Child enrolment remains a crucial subject of concern in the developing countries. Low literacy rate and poor economic condition of household remains an extensive subject in the empirical work all over the world from the last few decades. This issue cannot be addressed properly without concerns the incidence of poverty and enrolment dynamics. Child remains enrolled in one period and drop-out in another period and households face poverty in different phases. The relationship between the movement in enrolment and moving into and out of poverty of household is relatively positive. When households move out of poverty, then it is obvious that the enrolment of children increases along with other determinants of living standard. To capture the enrolment status of the same child with different poverty levels at different time is impossible without following the same child in different time. So, the present study uses multi-nominal logistic regression and panel datasets to analyze such effects. A multinomial logistic regression is estimated for 2004 and 2010, and vector of change variable is also included in the model. It is found that high poverty, high dependency ratio, large household size and gender discrimination in rural areas of Punjab and Sindh affect child enrollment negatively and found that parent education, parent’s income affect child enrollment positively and significantly.