Sweet are the fruit of adversity? The impact of fathers’ death on child non-cognitive outcomes in Ethiopia

This article looks at the effect paternal death can have on non-cognitive outcomes at age 15 and 22 depending on whether a child lost the father in middle childhood or adolescence. The article uses the potential outcome framework to estimate results using five rounds of longitudinal survey data for Ethiopia collected between 2002 and 2016. It finds that the loss of the father in middle childhood reduces an orphan’s self-esteem significantly by 0.15 standard deviations and subjective wellbeing by 16 per cent. These effects are not persistent. Instead, the loss of the father between ages 12-22, encompassing early, middle and late adolescence have significant positive effects on agency, self-efficacy, self-esteem and peer relationships as a young adult aged 22, improving them by 0.31, 0.28, 0.31 and 0.26 standard deviations respectively. This suggests that a father’s death during a child’s adolescent years may be associated with positive adaptive behavior.