Is education a determinant of women’s decision-making power within the household? A case study of an educational reform in Kenya

Abstract

Female empowerment is important for economic development. In this paper, I will examine the relationship between education and decision-making power within the household. Because of the issue of omitted variable bias, I will use a Difference-in-Difference method to test this relationship, using different exposure to the 1985 educational reform in Kenya. The two differences used are age cohorts and if one comes from a district with a low or high mean year of schooling in 1979. The findings show a fairly robust positive effect from the reform on two out of the five questions regarding final say on different decisions, namely the daily decisions. There is mainly no significant effect on the other dependent variables. I present several robustness checks for these results.