Parental Characteristics, Supply of Schools, and Child School-enrolment in Pakistan

Abstract

In recent yean, due to a virtual unanimity about the critical role of hmnan capital in economic development, increased efforts are being made in the developing countries to eradicate illiteracy. Despite a significant increase over time in the number of educational institutions and the government's expenditure on education in Pakistan, the performance of the education sector in terms of output has been at best meagre. This non-correspondence between the growth in the educational institutions and the resultant output implies that failure to enlist the participation of the population in education can hardly be attributed exclusively to an insufficiency of the schools. To the extent that child schooling reflects parental capacity to invest in hmnan capital formation, there is a need to reckon with factors bearing parental decision regarding child schooling. This paper investigates family's decision regarding child schooling through an assessment of the determinants of child school-enro1ment, using choice theoretic framework. The regression results are indicative of the influence of household status, both economic and social, on the propensity to invest in child schooling. A positive association between the household income, parental education, and tenurial status as land-owner bear out the importance of these factors in shaping the household's decision regarding investment in human capital formation. The study also fmds traces of the quantity-quality trade-off in family's preferences regarding the nmnber of children, and it is found to be male-specific. The most disturbing fmding of the study appears to be the predominance of the influence originating from parental education. It is this inter-generational transfer of human capital which needs more attention as it also implies that illiteracy, and hence poverty, of the parents gets transmitted to the off-spring. The analysis also brings out the fact that the labour market hiring practices serve as an important feedback to the household's human capital formation behaviour.