# **5.5 What is important, education among mothers or education among fathers?**

As discussed in section 2, much is still not known about the relative importance of the education of mothers and the education of fathers on children’s educational outcomes, but the existing evidence reveals some suggestive patterns. With the objective of looking at the differential effect of the education of mothers and the education of fathers on the intergenerational mobility of daughters and sons, we carry out the same analysis on each sample. Figure 5 and Appendix B present the results. There are two notable findings. First, in all countries except the Comoros, both measures coincide in pointing out the stronger effects of maternal years of schooling relative to paternal education. This finding echoes previous findings in other countries such as South Africa, Australia, and Sweden (Kwenda et al., 2015; Ranasinghe, 2015; Thomas, 1996; Branson et al., 2012). Figure 5 shows that, in all countries except Madagascar, maternal schooling has a stronger effect on daughters than on sons. The results suggest that extra maternal years of schooling have an important role in determining the educational outcomes among daughters than sons (see tables B10-B18 in Appendix B). This finding is similar to the findings of previous studies results in other parts of the world. Several studies in developed countries underlined that mothers education strongly affects the educational attainment of female children relative to male children (see, for example, Crook, 1995 on Australia; Bj ̈orklund et al., 2006 on Sweden). The differences in the effects of maternal and paternal years of schooling on children’s educational outcomes might emerge from the different roles played by mothers and fathers in family life, in the labor market, and role model effect in each country. It is likely that mothers become the natural role model for a daughter, and fathers for sons. Social norms regarding gender roles might also play a big role on who, sons or daughters, obtain more years of schooling. Second, in line with our other findings, we note a decline in father–child and mother–child intergenerational elasticity ( _β_<sup>ˆ</sup> ) across birth cohorts after the 1960s. The mother–child intergenerational elasticity declined more than father–child’s elasticity in Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda over the 50 years. In the Comoros, Malawi, and Tanzania, we document more gains in mobility from fathers to children.

Figure 5: The education of mothers or fathers?

<!-- Start of picture text --> a. Comoros-2004 b. Ghana-2013 c. Guinea-2003<br>1939 1949 1959 1969 1979 1948 1958 1968 1978 1988 1937 1947 1957 1967 1977<br>5-years birth cohorts 5-years birth cohorts 5-years birth cohorts<br>d. Madagascar-2005 e. Malawi-2010 f. Nigeria-2010<br>1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1946 1956 1966 1976 1986 1946 1956 1966 1976 1986<br>5-years birth cohorts 5-years birth cohorts 5-years birth cohorts<br>g. Rwanda -2000 h. Tanzania-2009 i. Uganda-2005<br>1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981<br>5-years birth cohorts 5-years birth cohorts 5-years birth cohorts<br>bmother bfather rmother rfather<br>1.5 1.5 1.5<br>1 1 1<br>.5 .5 .5<br>0 0 0<br>1.5 1.5 1.5<br>1 1 1<br>.5 .5 .5<br>0 0 0<br>1.5 1.5 1.5<br>1 1 1<br>.5 .5 .5<br>0 0 0<br><!-- End of picture text --> 26