Canagarajah and Coulombe [9] find a significant negative relationship between going to school and working in Ghana.

In contrast, Ravallion and Wodon [22] question that child labor displaces schooling in Bangladesh. In addition, Ray [23] and Bhalotra [7] do not find empirical evidence of the “luxury axiom” in the context of Pakistan and India respectively<sup>9</sup> .

It is not easy to identify standard key determinants of education due to the country-specific socio-cultural characteristics. Schultz [24] attempts to identify three key socioeconomic determinants of households’ demand for schooling and comes up with public expenditure on education, parental education and the wealth of families.

Spending in public education in developing countries (where the level of public infrastructure is typically low) may have a huge impact on stimulating education enrollment and attendance. Duflo [12], for example, focuses on the case of Indonesia, where a massive school construction program, implemented by the national government during the 1970s, led to a strong increase of the enrollment rate. Also Handa [15] and Handa and Simler [16] point out that building more schools in the context of Mozambique had a strong impact on school enrollment.

On the other hand, the lack of government support in fostering education might have drastic effects on education. In fact, Glewwe and Ilias [13] noted that enrollment rates declined in Ghana during the late 1970s and early 1980s due to a reduction of public spending in education. Nevertheless, Al-Samarrai [1], investigates the link between educational access and public education expenditure in a cross-country framework and finds that it is weak.

Household characteristics, such as the education of parents, probably represent one of the most relevant factors leading to children enrollment and attendance in the developing world. The idea underlying such claim is that educated parents by and large understand the importance of achieving basic education and therefore feel responsible to send their kids to school. The reverse is true for non-educated parents who started to work at an early age. This is evident in Wahba [28] that shows that Egyptian parents, who were child laborers themselves, would most likely send their children to work. In other words, for those parents education may not necessarily be considered as an investment.

Some studies also consider cultural aspects such as gender issues that may influence some disparities in enrollment and attendance. Tansel [25] points to gender as one characteristic that should not be neglected when analyzing the determinants of education. He noted that the effect of income on the schooling of girls was larger than that of boys. Al-Samarrai and Peasgood [2] find that household characteristics such as parental education may have a totally different impact on the education of females and males in Tanzania. Using some descriptive statistics, Bonifaz and Ochoa [8] find that Bolivia does not present a significant gender gap in terms of total school attendance, even though minor differences emerge when considering the socioeconomic status and the living area.

> 9 See Basu [5] for an analytical survey.

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