Maternal education, women’s access to information and childhood development a case of lao PDR

Ministry of Education and Training University of Economics Hochiminh City _ CHANTHAVONG SOMSANOUK “Maternal Education, Women’s Access to Information and Childhood Development: A Case of Lao PDR” MASTER DEGREE THESIS IN ECONOMICS HOCHIMINH CITY, VIETNAM Ministry of Education and Training University of Economics Hochiminh City _ CHANTHAVONG SOMSANOUK “Maternal Education, Women’s Access to Information and Childhood Development: A Case of Lao PDR” MAJOR: ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT (Research-Oriented Programme) CODE: 8310105 MASTER DEGREE IN ECONOMICS ACADAMIC ADVISOR: VO TAT THANG HOCHIMINH CITY, VIETNAM DECLARATION I certify that, All contents of this dissertation have never been submitted for any other degree and has never been currently submitted for any other degree I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and helps from the advisor in preparing this dissertation and all sources used, have been acknowledged in this dissertation.” Signature CHANTHAVONG SOMSANOUK iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to express my highest appreciation for my thesis supervisor Dr Vo Tat Thang for his valuable suggestions and encouragements during my study and doing research at the University of Economics Hochiminh City (UEH) My highest gratitude also goes to all instructors, lecturers who provide me valuable knowledge especially Prof Dr Pham Khanh Nam who compliments and provides best viewpoints on my thesis proposal; my friends in class who are actively discussed and commented on my thesis My research would not have been possible without the permission from UNDP’s survey data who formally provided data needed for the qualitative analysis part which are indeed valuable information that useful in this study My best sincere appreciation also goes to the People’s committee of Hochiminh city who provide and grant aid as exchange scholarship, especially the Lao student Dormitory in Hochiminh City where provide facilities and the best living condition during my study I also would like to express my best gratitude to the Postgraduate Institute of University of Economics Hochiminh City that helps facilitate and providing guidelines during my study in UEH Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my parents, sibling, wife and the dearest three sons of mine for support, love and encouragement, this dissertation is dedicated to them TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv TABLE OF CONTENT v LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF FIGURES viii List of abbreviations ix Abstract .x Introduction 1.1 Research Problem .1 1.2 Some fact on Lao social, economic Status 1.2.1 Government policy on gender 1.2.2 Mechanism 1.2.3 Education policy toward women empowerment 1.2.4 Government policy on education 1.2.5 Literacy status of Lao people .7 1.3 Research objective and Research question .11 1.4 Scope of the Study 12 1.5 Contribution 12 1.6 Thesis structure .12 Chapter 1: Literature review 14 1.1 Theoretical background 14 1.2 Empirical review .18 1.2.1 The impact of maternal education on early childhood development .21 1.2.2 The role of mother’s education and women access to information impact on early childhood development 24 1.2.3 The effect of development economics on health .24 1.3 Summary 25 Chapter 2: Research Methodology and Data Resources 27 2.1 Conceptual framework 27 2.2 Analytical model and data processing: 31 2.2.1 Model .31 2.2.2 Estimation method 34 2.2.3 Variable definitions 34 2.3 Data: 40 2.3.1 LSIS I .40 2.3.2 LSIS II 43 Chapter Empirical result .45 3.1 Data description 45 3.2 Emperial result 47 3.2.1 Maternal education and early childhood development 49 3.2.2 Women access to information and early childhood development 49 3.2.3 Regional Effect 49 3.2.4 Wealth Quintile Index 50 3.2.5 Ethnicity effect 50 3.2.6 Clean water using and toilet using 50 3.2.7 Household Member and number of children under 51 3.2.8 Age of mother 51 3.2.9 Child’s gender: 51 Chapter Conclusion 52 4.1 Conclusions .52 4.2 Policy implications 53 4.3 Limitation of the study 53 REFERENCES I APPENDIX IV LIST OF TABLES Table1.1: Attendance of students by Education Level in 2014-2015 Table 1.2: Mean primary school enrollment rates (in %) for children aged 6-12 (20022003) Table 2.1 Detail description of the variables Table 3.1 Descriptive statistic of variables used in the regression model Table 3.2 Logit estimation result Table 3.3 Average Marginal Effect result LIST OF FIGURES The diagrams for the determinants for early childhood development The Development progress of children in different age ranges List of abbreviations CEDAW: The Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination CRC: Right of the Child ECD: Early Childhood Development Lao PDR: Lao People’s Democratic Republic LWU: Lao Women’s Union GRID: Gender Resource Information and Development Center Lao NCAW: Lao National Commission for Advancement of Women Abstract Maternal Education, Women’s Access to Information and Childhood Development: A Case of Lao PDR Chanthavong Somsanouk The Lao People Democratic Republic (PDR), a transitional economy, and one of least developed economics in Southeast Asia region, After its opening the country and an economic pathway of its development following the semi-market economy system, the GDP of Laos during last decade growth with an average rate of 7%, which is a high rate compared to many countries in the region In the long run, to guarantee the sustainable growth and development of the country, to raise the productivity, the need for human resource becomes one of the main focuses in the 8th Social Economic Development Plan This paper examines the impact of maternal education and women’s access to information on probability of the outcomes of early childhood development as expectedly that the healthier children will eventually to provide higher labor productivity and guarantee the sustainable development of the country By using the Logit regression model, the measurement of health status of children called Early Childhood Development (ECD) this fills the gaps and make it more diversity in research on the determinant of the child’s health The result of the study shows that maternal education is confirmed to have a positive effect on children well being Children whose his or her mother has more years of school are more likely to be properly developed At the same time, Women access to information also found to have a positive effect with a satisfactory level of statistical significance for the likeliness that her children are properly developed The suggestions on implication of the theoretical and the finding of the research are the scientifically advanced for the policy makers for setting up guidelines for sustainable development strategies, particularly in aspect of women and child empowerment through education and access to information Key words: Maternal Education, Women’s access to Information, Early Childhood Development, Lao PDR 44 The survey also sampled men (age 15-49), but required only a subsample All men (age 15-49) were identified in every other household 12,694 men (age 15-49 years) were listed in the household questionnaires Questionnaires were completed for 12,017 eligible men, which corresponds to a response rate of 95 percent within eligible interviewed households There were 11,812 children under age five listed in the household questionnaires Questionnaires were completed for 11,720 of these children, which corresponds to a response rate of 99 percent within interviewed households A sub-sample of children 5-17 years were used to administer the questionnaire for children of 5-17 years Only one child has been selected randomly in each household interviewed, and there were 31,339 children (5-17 years) listed in the household questionnaires Of these, 15,494 children (5-17 years) were selected, and questionnaires were completed for 15,435 which correspond to a response rate of 99.6 percent within the interviewed households In this research, the combination two sets of the data on Early Childhood Development from LSIS I and LSIS II are used to make the larger samples Children at age between 2-4 years are the main targets, detail as table below: Number of children 2-4 years Male Female LSIS I 4426 2269 2157 LSIS II 4881 2499 2381 Total 9307 4768 2538 45 Chapter Empirical result 3.1 Data description In this study dataset is obtained from the MICS, which are the collected set of data from MICS and MICS6 MICS5 is the survey completed in the year 2011-2012; MICS6 is the survey completed in the year 2016-2017 Total number of children age ranges from 2-5 years, in the collection of two times of surveys is 8.269 children, 4.080 are female child Table 3.1: Descriptive statistic for variables used in the regression model Variables Means Standard Min Max Deviation Dependent Variable ECD 854275 3528516 DM1 220462 4145833 DM2 98186 1334659 DM3 8790664 3260698 DM4 9494498 2190907 Independence variable MEDU 6.108598 3.838076 24 ACINFOR 5158438 4997857 MAGE 29.49825 6.523034 15 49 CHGEN 5065909 4999868 CLEANWT 7360019 4408249 HHMEM 6.409602 2.690935 34 UNDER5 1.61652 8029776 ETNGROUP 0: Other 1: Lao-Tai 2: MonKhmer 46 Hmongmien Chines-T WINDEX poorest Second Middle Upper Richest OWNLPLOT 7555932 4297609 1 REGION North Central South Number of Observation: 8.269 Dependent Variable: Early childhood development: in the sample, there are 8.269 observations, while those are properly developed are 7.082 people, or about 85,65%, this shows that in entire view most of Lao children are properly developed Domain 1: Literacy and Numeracy: out of 8.268 children, there are only 1.823 children are properly developed, while another 77,95% are poorly developed Domain 2: Physical: almost all children have proper physical development, only 1% found to be poorly developed Domain 3: approaches to learning: there are over 7000 children are properly developed, only 5% are found to be poorly developed Domain 4: Social-Emotional Development: children who are not properly developed account for only 15% out of the whole samples Independent variables: School year of mother school: the highest level of school is 22 years, while the lowest is no illiteracy mother The total number of mothers in the sample is 5,693 persons, in average Lao mother give birth to 1.45 children And most of the mothers are primary school graduate which is accounted for 1,491 persons 47 3.2 Emperial result Table 3.2 Logit estimation result Independent Variables MEDU WACINFOR MAGE CHGEN CLEANEDWT USETOILET HHMEM UNDER5 ETNGROUP LAO-TAI MON-KHMER HMONG-MIEN CHINESE-TIB Household Region Central South WEALTH INDEX SECOND MIDDLE FOURTH RICHEST OWNLPLOT _CONS ECD Logit Coef 0460** 2293* 02076* 2530** 1325 1685 -.0485* 0401 (pvalue) DM1 (P-value) DM2 (P-value) DM3 (P-value) DM4 (P-value) (0.002) (0.024) (0.014) (0.008) 0513*** 7830*** 0158** -.1680* (0.000) (0.000) (0.006) (0.016) 0082 2680 -.0346 -.1689 (0.854) (0.396) (0.258) (0.623) 0101 3538* 0061 -.3392* (0.692) (0.041) (0.641) (0.032) 0191 0396 0167* -.2333* (0.144) (0.696) (0.041) (0.014) (0.259) (0.198) (0.030) (0.599) -.1119 1733 -.0820*** 0303 (0.270) (0.136) (0.000) (0.622) -.5265 -.0737 -.0146 -.2954 (0.302) (0.852) (0.844) (0.249) -.0191 -.1073 -.0474 -.0732 (0.918) (0.574) (0.156) (0.526) 2288 1847 -.0045 0496 (0.062) (0.193) (0.854) (0.549) 6472 2733 5214 -.3181 (0.177) (0.569) (0.290) (0.555) 7009 6372 1663 4215 (0.142) (0.186) (0.735) (0.432) 2.0860 (0.056) 9770 (0.363) 1.9136 (0.113) 1.2191** 7274 8950 (omitted) (0.005) (0.089) (0.059) 7089 5400 8341 0211 (0.116) (0.236) (0.077) (0.967) -.3001* 0335 (0.013) (0.811) -.3261*** -.6464*** (0.000) (0.000) -.6258** -.8128*** (0.005) (0.000) 0591 5817*** (0.601) (0.000) -.1824 (0.184) 0162 (0.926) -.0406 (0.841) 1028 (0.666) -.0220 (0.854) 9536 (0.093) Prob > chi2 = 0.0000 Obs = 4,720 Note: *p chi2 = 0.0000 Obs = 4,688 -.0235 (0.880) -.1969 (0.279) -.3130 (0.122) -.3704 (0.108) -.0961 (0.412) 7095 (0.191) Prob > chi2 = 0.0001 Obs = 4,720 48 Table 3.3 Average Marginal Effect Independent Variables MEDU WACINFOR MAGE CHGEN CLEANEDWT USETOILET HHMEM UNDER5 ETNGROUP LAO-TAI MON-KHMER HMONG-MIEN CHINESE-TIB HHRegion Central South WEALTH INDEX SECOND MIDDLE FOURTH RICHEST OWNLPLOT ECD dy/dx 0043** 0217* 0019** -.0239** 0125 0159 -.0046* 0038 (p-value) (p-value) 0.002 0.025 0.014 0.008 0.259 0.198 0.030 0.599 DM1 dy/dx 0088*** 1356*** 0027** -.0291* -.0194 0300 -.0142*** 0052 0696 0333 0585 -.0469 0.273 0.600 0.364 0.535 -.0292* 0028 -.0180 0014 -.0038 0091 -.0020 Note: *p