1 Introduction
Children comprise the majority of the population in many African countries and represent the
region’s future. If they lack the skills and knowledge needed to lead productive lives, Africa’s
economic development might be limited and its ability to reduce poverty jeopardized (World Bank,
2003). Most international development organizations and many academic researchers believe that
the widespread institution of child fostering, in which parents send their own biological children
to live with another family, has negative consequences for that child’s human capital investment
and welfare outcomes (Bledsoe and Brandon, 1989; Haddad and Hoddinott, 1994; Kielland, 1999;
UNICEF, 1999; Case, Lin, McLanahan, 2000; Bishai et al., 2003; Fafchamps and Wahba, 2004).
A child living away from his biological parents might be more likely to work, might experience
psychological problems, or might suffer due to the disruption of living away from his siblings.
It is also possible these children could benefit both in the short and long-run from the fostering
experience by having access to schools, receiving better nutrition, or exposure to an expanded social
network. The impact of fostering, on the foster child, his biological siblings who remained behind,
and his host siblings in the receiving household, is an empirical question.
This paper uses data collected by the author during eighteen months of fieldwork in Burkina
Faso to measure the impact of child fostering on school enrollment.1 Previous researchers have
used cross-sectional data to evaluate the effect of children not residing with their biological parents,
but cross-sectional data can only compare the current enrollment status for foster children with
that of their non-fostered host family siblings (Case, Lin, McLanahan, 2000; Zimmerman, 2003).
Their results will be biased if there is some unobservable factor omitted from the analysis that is
correlated with both fostering and school enrollment.
1According to these data, approximately 27 percent of households either sent or received a foster child between
1998 and 2000, and these children spent, on average, 2.75 years living away from their parents.