Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1649:
Orphanhood and Critical Periods in Children’s Human Capital Formation: Long-Run Evidence from North-Western Tanzania
Jens Hagen, Toman Omar Mahmoud and Natalia Trofimenko
Abstract: Losing a parent is a trauma that has consequences for
human capital formation. Does it matter at what age this trauma occurs?
Using longitudinal data from the Kagera region in Tanzania that span
thirteen years from 1991-2004, we find considerable impact heterogeneity
across age at bereavement, but less so for the death of opposite-sex
parents. In terms of long-term health status as measured by body height,
children who lose their same-sex parent before teenage years are hit
hardest. Regarding years of formal education attained in young adulthood,
boys whose fathers die before adolescence suffer the most. Maternal
bereavement does not fit into this pattern as it affects educational
attainment of younger and older children in a similar way. The generally
strong interaction between age at parental death and sex of the late parent
suggests that the preferences of the surviving parent partly protect
same-sex children from orphanhood’s detrimental effects on human capital
accumulation
Keywords: orphans, health, education, timing of parental death, child development, Tanzania; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: I10,; I21,; J19,; C23; (follow links to similar papers)
32 pages, September 2010
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