The name is absent

the fostering.

There is evidence that where the foster child is sent is correlated with how well that child does
relative to the child’s host and biological siblings. Foster children sent to live with households
in Côte d’Ivoire or Ouagadougou are 11.6 and 9.3 percent more likely to be enrolled after the
fostering compared with, respectively, their host and biological siblings. This result contrasts with
the outcome for foster children sent to households living in the same village, which is more likely
to occur following a parent death. These foster children are 14.3 percent less likely to be enrolled
after the fostering compared with their host siblings.

4.2 Child Fixed Effects Results

In using the household fixed effects specification, I can address the issue that certain households are
more prone to foster children than other households and that these unobservable factors influencing
fostering might also affect school enrollment. However, there might also be factors (unobservable
to the econometrician) at the child level that influence the fostering decision and that child’s school
enrollment. These factors could include the child’s ability or personality (which are probably known
by the biological parents) and would bias the measurement of the impact of fostering on school
enrollment. A child fixed effects regression can control for these factors and measure the impact
on school enrollment after that child is fostered.

In Table 6, I present results from child fixed effects regressions comparing foster children with
host siblings (Panel A) and biological siblings (Panel B). After controlling for the foster child’s type,
there is no impact of fostering on the foster child’s school enrollment relative to either host (column
1) or biological siblings (column 4). Foster boys are 4.2 and 3.9 percent more likely to be enrolled
after the fostering compared to host and biological siblings, respectively, but the coefficients are
not significant. Similar to the household fixed effects, younger foster children do better than older

17

<<   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   >>

More intriguing information