Abstract
This research’s objective was to analyze the effect of functional illiteracy on households’ living conditions in Congo-Brazzaville. It was based on an adaptation of games’ theory proposed by Rubinstein (1996). The study used data from the 4th general census of the Congo population and housing in 2007 (National Institute of Statistics, 2007), which includes a population of 632,502 heads of households aged 15 - 64 at the time of the census. Analyses were conducted with a simultaneous equation system using the Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) algorithm developed by Roodman (2011). Results show that functional illiteracy significantly contributes to the precariousness of household living conditions. This result supports the essential place of education and the mastery of literacy and numeracy in the fight against poverty.
Highlights
This research’s objective was to analyze the effect of functional illiteracy on households’ living conditions in Congo-Brazzaville
Analyses were conducted with a simultaneous equation system using the Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) algorithm developed by Roodman (2011)
Regarding children’s education, Hart and Risley (2003) point out that there is a gap of thousands of words between children from low-income families and children from high-income families. They conclude that the average child in a high-income family will have heard almost 45 million words by age 4, compared to 13 million words for the average child living in a low-income family
Summary
This research’s objective was to analyze the effect of functional illiteracy on households’ living conditions in Congo-Brazzaville. In the case of Congo, between 1970 and 2017, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased by 1.2 percent (World Bank, 2019) In this interval, people living under the poverty line went from 50.7% in 2005 to 46.5 in 2011 (CNSEE, 2005, 2011). Despite the steady increase in literacy over the past 50 years, more than 750 million people worldwide are still illiterate, especially children, adolescents, and women (UIS—Unesco Institute of Statistics, 2017). This figure represents a number more than three times the population of Brazil. As is true for most phenomena that hamper economic and social development, sub-Saharan Africa remains the sub-region most affected by illiteracy and
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