Household Migration and Children's Educational Attainment. The case of Uganda

In many Sub-Saharan African countries, a large number of people migrate internally or abroad because of demographic, economic and political factors. This pronounced mobility is likely to have consequences for children's education, still a matter of concern in the region. We study this issue for Uganda, investigating whether migration of household members affects children's primary education and in what direction. Using the Uganda National Panel Survey for 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011, we estimate conditional fixed effects logit models of school attendance and primary school completion. We find that children's migration has a significant positive impact while adults' migration has a significant negative one on children's school attendance rates, while remittances have no influence. These findings suggest that children's migration is indeed beneficial, since it may contribute to match demand and supply of schooling. Adults' absence, instead, has controversial effects when children are left behind. In fact, lack of supervision and substitution of adults' tasks with child work might reduce the rate of school attendance. However, neither children's nor adults' migration seem to increase the rate of primary school completion, an evidence that points to the problem of the low quality of primary education in developing countries.