Free Senior High School Policy, Household Income, and Secondary School Enrollment in Ghana
利用2017年加纳取消高中学费的准自然实验，研究发现政策降低了家庭收入与入学率之间的关联，但收入仍是重要预测因素，尤其对北部贫困地区男生影响更大，且政策对保留率的作用强于初始入学。
Many children in poor countries forgo continued education due to both the direct costs of attending school (such as tuition) as well as the indirect opportunity costs. Children in households with greater income should not be as constrained and so are more likely to enrol. This paper exploits a natural experiment from Ghana in 2017 that eliminated the direct costs for secondary school but not the opportunity costs. To what extent did the association between income and enrolment weaken after this policy change? Using data from Ghana’s Socio-Economic Panel Survey from both before and after 2017, we find that associations between the two diminished after 2017, indicating that the policy helped to lower the dependence on household resources. Nevertheless, income remained a statistically significant predictor of enrolment, albeit not uniformly across the sample, especially for males as well as those in northern Ghana, its poorest region, and so delinking income from enrolment is not universal. Finally, we find that the decrease in income’s importance mattered more for retention than upon initial enrolment in secondary school.