other orphans are not found to be disadvantaged. Case and Ardington (2006) study schooling outcomes using a 2-3 year panel survey from South Africa. They find evidence of a causal effect of mother’s deaths on children’s education outcomes. Father’s death, on the other hand, does not result in lower education, which instead is found to be indicative of the socio-economic conditions of the household prior to the death.

Ainsworth and Semali (2000) use the KHDS 1991-94 data (the baseline for this study) to present random and fixed child effects model estimates of adult death on children’s height-for-age and weightfor-height. While random effects results show lower height for all maternal orphans and reduced height among paternal orphans in poor households, the fixed effects results are not significant possibly due to the small number of children who have any change in their orphan status in between the survey rounds (about 21 months from first to last interview). They find no association between the loss of a parent (regardless of being co-resident at the time) or recent adult death in the households and subsequent child weight-forheight. Overall, the authors conclude that policy interventions should target poor households in general, among which the households hardest hit by adult mortality are likely to be found. They identify population-wide policy interventions, like universal availability of oral rehydration salts at health facilities, measles vaccination and improved physical access to medical care as being most appropriate.

Using unique panel data from Kenya, Evans and Miguel (2007) study a large sample of nonorphans enrolled in grades 1-7 in 1998 and re-interviewed in 2002. They evaluate the impact of orphanhood transitions on schooling participation (measured as the fraction of visits in the school year in which the child was in school on the day of an unannounced check). Maternal deaths lead to lower participation after the death, as well as in the 1-2 years before the death. Paternal orphans did not have lower school participation. It is unclear how the measure of school participation translates into completed school years, but, presumably, it implies lower overall attainment. They also examine the direction of omitted variable bias and conclude that unobservable characteristics of orphans lead to underestimates of impact. Yamano and Jayne (2005) study the impact of prime-age adult deaths on schooling for 7-14 year olds using panel data from 2000 and 2002 which is similar, although not equivalent, to assessing the impact of orphanhood. They find much larger effects among children from poorer households. Girls suffer reduced schooling prior to the adult death while boys experience lower schooling after deaths.

While existing studies are varied in their methods and conclusions, several themes emerge. Panel data analyses show that omitted variable (pre-orphan characteristics) can bias results. Further, there may be considerable heterogeniety across different types of orphans, or in effects depending on the circumstances of different orphans, such as gender. For example, there is a higher likelihood that orphans who are fostered from a young age may be treated more like the children of the head, if foster children when fostered at young ages display similar bonding with foster parents as biological children. Likewise, 4