The Impact of Household Structure on Educational Attainment in a Context of Rapid School Expansion

Carla Pederzini, Universidad Iberoamericana
Marta Mier-y-Teran, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Mexico has recently experienced a growing presence of female-headed households which coincides with the expansion of secondary and post-secondary education. We use the Population Censuses of 1990 and 2005 to analyze the role of household structure on the evolution of educational inequality of school age population in three age groups related to the educational levels in Mexico. We describe the composition of young population and measure school attainment according to household structure, socioeconomic status of the household (proxied by household educational climate) and size of locality of residence. In order to measure the effect of household structure on education, we estimate two regression models using school attendance and years of schooling as dependent variables. We interact explanatory variables with a dummy variable for 2005 observations in order to measure change on the impact of each variable over the period.