School Dropout in Rural Vietnam: Does Gender Matter

1
School Dropout in Rural Vietnam Does Gender
Matter?

• Jianye Liu
• Population Study Center
• Sociology Department of UWO

2
Why this topic?

• Education is not only a human right, but is also
  crucial to national, familial, and individual
  development.
• It is a central concern in every developing
  country.
• While the enrollment of girls has increased in
  past decades, girls continue to be less likely to
  complete their schooling.
• Why Vietnam?

3

• Cultural practices
• The Chinese Occupation of Vietnam-Confucianism
  women have lower status than men both in family
  and society -Patriarchal, Patrilineal and
  Patrilocal society.
• The French Occupation and then socialism
  cancelled out many of the values of Confucianism.
• Socialist reforms (market-oriented) since 1986
• resumed many of the values of Confucianism.
• - the kinship system
• - son preference

4

• Economic situation
• Vietnam is a poor country a typical pyramid
  structure of education system (no enough space
  for children in schoool).
• Recent economic reforms
• school system is mainly funded by local
  governments and the family.
• The household average expenditure on schooling
  has more than doubled in the 1990s.
• The family is the basic productive unit More
  child labor is needed both inside household and
  in the farm work.
• Results in a relatively high school dropout
  rate.

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Theoretical framework
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Data and Methodology

• Data
• Vietnam Living Standard Surveys (VLSS) conducted
  in 1997-98, a state representative survey.
• Two sets of questionnaires
• Individual
• Commune and school (minor urban and rural areas)
• Stratified cluster sample
• Strata Urban/rural
• Cluster community
• Household (all individuals).
• Children aged 6 to 18 ever in school are used in
  the analysis.

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• Methodology Multilevel Model
• Why?
• Theoretical reasons
• effects of social context the community and
  school characteristics affect individual
  behavior.
• Cross-level interactions are theoretically
  necessary.
• Unobserved heterogeneity impossible to include
  all theoretically related variables into the
  model (individual motivation for school).
• Statistical reasons
• Cluster samples (as with the VLSS) violate

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• Methodology Multilevel Model
• Dependence Individuals in the same cluster will
  be correlated because they experience common
  social settings
• Heteroscedasticity variances are different in
  different clusters.
• The regression coefficients produced by OLS
• biased because of heteroscedasticity
• standard errors will be too small because of
  dependence ( Type ? error).
• Without taking into account this clustering of
  cases in my sample, the inferences will be
  incorrect.

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• Operation of Multilevel Model
• Program HLM (Hierachical Linear Model)
• Two level model
• level-1 individual (6816 cases)
• level-2 school (532)
• level-2 community (158 cases)
• Dependent variable
• whether a child ever in school dropped out of
  school
• 0 in school or have a secondary school diploma
• 1 out of school without a secondary school
  diploma.

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• Results
• Empty (unconditional) model
• To gauge the magnitude of variation between
  communities in school dropout.
• Conclusion
• School dropping out rate varied from community to
  community.
• social and school contexts have significant
  effects.
• Multilevel model has to be used for the data
  analysis.
• Conditional models
• Individual level
• Gender matters boys are less likely to drop out
  of school (almost half of the probability of
  girls), with all other things equal.
• The probability of school dropout increases with
  age and childrens labor participation.

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Household level1. The odds of school dropout
decrease with the household income and the
proportion of household expenditures on
education.2. The probability increases with the
number of siblings in the household, but
decreases with the household size.3. The
household heads education level is positively
related to children staying in school.
Commune/ward context1. Whether the
commune/ward has any traditional occupations or
handicrafts increases the occurrence of school
dropout. 2. The probability of school dropout
varied with economic level of commune/ward.
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School context1. The pyramid structure of
school system results in a strict selective
process in childrens schooling. 2. The
probability of school dropout increases with the
school fees. Interaction term 1. The
interaction between gender and socioeconomic
level of commune indicates that a gender
difference in school dropout is more likely to
appear in the undeveloped areas, narrows with the
increase of human development level, and
disappears in the highly developed areas. 2. The
significant interaction between gender and the
quality of teachers indicates that the gender gap
in school dropout changes with the quality of
teachers.
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Models for boys and girls Social, school,
household covariates affect boys and girls
differently eg. Household income, size, school
fees. ConclusionGender really matters in
school dropout both from the micro and macro
prospects.