Population Council Research that makes a difference

Population Association of America Annual Meeting
31 March–2 April 2011

Abstract

"Gender differences in school effects on learning and enrollment outcomes in rural Malawi"
Monica J. Grant, Erica Soler-Hampejsek, Barbara S. Mensch, and Paul C. Hewett

This paper uses data from the 2007 and 2008 rounds of the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Survey (MSAS) to investigate school-level factors that differentially affect the learning and enrollment outcomes for male and female students. Preliminary analyses show that although female students are significantly more likely than male students to leave school between survey rounds, they also are more likely than males to be literate in English or Chichewa. We find that school-level factors make a negligible contribution to the overall variance in school re-enrollment. However, school-level variance accounts for a larger share of the overall variance in math performance, grade repetition, and absenteeism for female relative to male students. This suggests that even though there is no significant difference by sex in the average math score and absenteeism, the association between the sex of the respondent and these outcomes may not be constant across school contexts.

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