Education Among Zambian Children: Linking Head of Household Characteristics to School Attendance

Background and Purpose: The United Nations (UN) recognizes basic education as a fundamental human right. Empirical literature on children’s education outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa stresses the significant role of poverty on children’s school attendance or enrollment. Furthermore, scholarly discourse has been extended to the effects of gender disparities, orphanhood, and rural/urban residence on children’s education outcomes. In 2014, children under the age of 15 accounted for approximately half of the Zambian population, and 15% of these children were out of school. This raises concerns for the future development of the country. Despite evidence of parental and/or head of household characteristics’ effects on children’s education, there has been little discussion about this association on Zambian children’s schooling outcomes. This study examined predictors of school attendance among Zambian children.

Method: Cross-sectional survey data from the Zambia Demographic Health Survey (ZDHS) 2013-14 was used. The sample included 24,165 school age children between the ages of 6-14. The dependent variable was a binary measure indicating whether the child attended school in 2013. Predictor variables included age, orphan status, gender, rural/urban residence, household wealth, relationship to head of household (HH), HH’s gender, age, education attainment, and employment status. Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the data.

Results: The sample was almost equally divided between males and females. About 23% of the children were not in school. Fourteen percent were orphans, and 42% of children in the sample were from poor households. The highest percentage (45%) of the HHs had a primary level education. The logistic model showed that children living with a female HH were 1.3 times more likely to attend school compared to those living with a male HH (OR = 1.339, p < .001). And for each year increase in the age of the HH, the odds of school attendance decreased by .6% (OR = .994, p < .05). Children living with a HH that had primary education (OR = 1.557, p < .001), secondary  (OR = 2.347, p < .001), college education (OR = 4.980, p < .001) had greater odds of school attendance compared to children living with a HH without formal education. In comparison to children whose parent was the HH, living with a grandparent (OR = .758, p < .05), other relative (OR= .573, p < .001), and non-relative HH (OR = .117, p < .001) was associated lesser odds of school attendance. Additionally being female, older, from a wealthier household, and non-orphan was associated with greater odds of school attendance (p < .05).

Conclusions and Implications: Results contribute to prior research by identifying supportive evidence of the role of head of household characteristics on school attendance. Implications for social work research and practice include the need for increased support for head of household educational attainment, support for children not living with kin and improving household’s socioeconomic conditions in promoting school attendance. Further investigation is warranted to examine school attendance from a longitudinal perspective to establish whether attendance maybe linked to changes in socioeconomic conditions across the lifespan.