Maternal Employment, Parental Education Levels and Household’s Income: Differential Impacts on the Schooling of Male and Female Children in Pakistan

Abstract

The present research empirically investigates the impact of a mother’s employment status, parental education levels, and household income on school enrollment of male and female children (aged 5-15 years) in Pakistan. Child school enrollment is taken as a binary dependent variable, i.e., attending the school or not. A micro data set of 31,294 children from the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) is utilized and analyzed by applying binary logistic regression. Maternal employment, parental education, and household income had discrepancies in their estimated marginal effects on the school enrollment of male child (N = 15266) and female child (N = 14113). A unit increase in maternal employment was responsible for bringing less than one percent decrease in the school enrollment of male child while more than five percent decrease in the school enrollment of female child. Similarly, a unit increase in maternal education (graduation) resulted in respectively 25.32% and 33.55% increase in the school enrollment of male and female child. Whereas a unit increase in paternal education (graduation) resulted in respectively 19.14% and 15.82% increase in the school enrollment of male and female child. A unit increase in a household’s income brought a 2.59% and 5.95% increase in the school enrollment of male and female child. The study signifies maternal education as the most influential and decisive factor in enhancing school enrollments of male child and female child in Pakistan.