Family and Gender in Schooling: A New Visit from the 2002 ENNVIH

Carla Pederzini, Universidad Iberoamericana

Even though Mexican girls show better shooling results than boys, they drop out from school earlier. It has been found that birth order, household size and composition and belonging to an Indian community have strong effects on the gender gap in schooling. In this paper I re-estimate a school attendance logistic model with female interactions and fixed effects by household using a more comprehensive database: ENNVIH 2002. This database allows me to control for a number of variables (school characteristics, child cognitive abilities, etc.) not available in previous databases, in order to measure the determinants of the gender gap in school attendance. The model is estimated for population in three different age groups which correspond to the schooling levels: primary school (6-13 years ), secondary school (12-15 years) and post secondary (16-19 years). The results show whether previous conclusions hold when a more comprehensive model is estimated.