Study Overview
Loss of a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can face. If loss of a parent reduces investments in children, it can also have long-lasting implications. This study uses parametric and seminonpara-metric matching techniques to estimate how one human capital investment, school enrollment, is affected by a parent’s recent death. We analyze data from 600,000 households from Indonesia’s National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) during 1994–1996. We find a parent’s recent death has a large effect on a child’s enrollment. We also use this shock to test several theories of intrahousehold allocation and find little differential treatment based on the gender of the child or the deceased parent.
Study Results
The basic result of this paper is that a recent parent’s death reduces children’s enrollment in Indonesia. This effect is largest for youth at the transitions between primary and junior secondary and between junior secondary and secondary. Our results are more convincing than past findings for two reasons. First, we use both parametric and seminonparametric methods. Second, we have a much larger sample size than most prior research on this topic.