and host siblings having a positive but insignificant enrollment increase. Foster children aged 8 to
11 actually experience a significant 5.6 percent drop in enrollment after the fostering relative to
the non-fostering household children. The oldest children in the fostering households fare the worst
relative to the non-fostering household children, with host and biological siblings experiencing a
9.4 and 5.4 percent drop, respectively, in enrollment after the fostering. The older foster children
experience an insignificant negative drop in enrollment relative to the non-fostering household
children. Based on the child fixed effects results, on average all children in the households involved
in fostering experience an improvement in enrollment, but the effect is significant and largest for
the youngest children.
Columns 5 to 8 estimate household fixed effects regressions that control for time-invariant factors
that might influence which households are involved in fostering children. In the regression using
all children, those fostered have 4.1 percent higher enrollment than the children from non-fostering
households, but the coefficient is not significant at standard levels. However, young foster children
have a larger increase in enrollment, 18.2 percent, after the fostering relative to non-fostering
household children, and the coefficient is significant at the 1 percent level. For older foster children,
there is no significant impact after the fostering. For the host and biological siblings, the regression
pooling all ages shows no impact on enrollment after the fostering, but older biological siblings are
5.8 percent less likely to be enrolled. The coefficient estimates for host siblings, biological siblings,
and foster children in column 5 are consistent with the Table 4 results showing foster children to
have a higher enrollment after the fostering relative to the host and biological siblings.
4.4 Adult Welfare Outcomes
Having provided evidence that child fostering can lead to a Pareto improvement in school enrollment
for the children in both the sending and receiving households, it is also important to understand if
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