Adverse climate variability and child school absenteeism Intra-child gender evidence in Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate  shocks  have  adverse  effects  on  child  school  absenteeism  in  rural  households  in

Ethiopia.  This  paper  examines  the  existence  of  gender-biased  effects  of  adverse  climatic shocks.  Random  effects  probit  estimation  technique  is  applied  to  fit  the  binary  outcome variable at which values of all regression coefficients vary randomly over individuals. Margins after the random effect probit is executed to communicate the economic significance of results as the random effects probit is a nonlinear model. These shocks affect child school absenteeism but with no gender bias. Mothers’ education levels, a proxy variable for empowerment, are inversely related to school absenteeism.