adopted child and, as such, could not be fully transposed to the more general parent-child relationship, even in the Rwandan context.

Björklund, Lindahl, and Plug (2004) suggest three grounds to question the external validity of the adoption strategy: (1) parents might treat biological and non-biological children differently, (2) adoptive parents might not be average parents, and (3) adoptive children might not be average children.

The fact that the type of relationship linking the “adopted” child with his “adoptive” family is very significant in all regressions and that the more distant the relationship the worse the schooling of the child already suggests differential treatment. This appears to be an instance of Hamilton’s rule that investment in the human capital of a child decreases with the distance between the child and the head of the household (Case, Paxson, and Ableidinger, 2004). Panel A of table 6 presents regressions, with household fixed effects, of schooling enrollment of the children by age, gender and the type of relationship with the head of the household for the sample of all children, biological and adoptive, living in households where both biological and non-biological children are present. The results are consistent with those in Case, Paxson, and Ableidinger (2004) for other African countries: within the same household, non-biological children have lower educational achievements than biological children. And Hamilton’s rule seems to apply quite exactly: grandchildren and other relatives fare worse than biological children, non-relatives fare worse than relatives and domestic employees fare worse than any other category<sup>13</sup> .

By using household fixed effects, the regressions in panel A of table 6 exclude any effect due to differences in types of household and the types of parents between adoptive families and non-adoptive families. However, the fact that non-biological children are worse off could be due either to a differential treatment by the parents (discrimination) or to the fact that “adopted” children are not average children, because, at least a substantial part of them have been exposed to the shock of losing their parents, potentially during the Genocide. But since Hamilton’s rule seems to apply quite precisely, this points rather in the direction of discrimination as a function of distance from the head of the household.<sup>14</sup> However, finding a positive and significant coefficient for the environmental component of the intergenerational 13 Another explanation can be advanced for the lower educational achievement of adoptees who are not relatives of the head of the household. After the 1994 Genocide, orphans who could not be placed with relatives were placed in government or private-not-for profit (mainly religious) orphanages. In 1998, the policy changed: orphanages were closed and those children were sent in foster families. If the orphanages had a detrimental effect on educational attainment (this is by no means established, as some of the orphanages were well funded by foreign charities) during the 1994-1998 period, and since non-relative adoptees are probably more likely to have stayed in an orphanage, their lower educational achievement might be due to their past in the orphanage rather than current discrimination from their adoptive family. The EICV which has no data about past family arrangements of the children, does not allow to test this alternative explanation. I tend to prefer Hamilton’s rule since it has been established by Case, Paxson, and Ableidinger (2004) for other African countries where no such policy change occurred.

14 Unless “adopted” children who are relatives of the head of the household are less likely to be orphans, for some reason. Since the data does not say whether the child is actually an orphan and if not, why he is not living with his biological parents, it is impossible to investigate this issue.

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