The greater mothers' empowerment, the higher girls' schooling: Evidence from DHS monogamous households

This paper uses Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 23 sub-Saharan African countries to highlight the link between mothers’ empowerment and gender bias in schooling decisions in monogamous households. Based on the collective model of Chiappori (1988, 1992), the analysis starts with the argument that altruistic fathers and mothers have different effects on the education of their sons and daughters as a result of differences in their preferences and/or in the children’s human capital technologies. Our empirical analysis uses traditional indicators of women’s empowerment (education, labor market participation) and more fastidious indicators provided by DHS surveys (access to mass media, decisions about the use of earnings, etc.). The results suggest that empowering mothers could lead to improving girls’ school attendance.