Child Education and Economic Empowerment of Women in Heterogeneous Family Structure: An empirical evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

Child education is the most essential aspect of human development. It is one of the key feature for altering the prevailing state of an economy into a renowned position worldwide. There is huge literature that exhibits women empowerment affects households outcomes like especially education. However, there is no comprehensive approach to measure the impact of economic women empowerment on child education. Family structure may affect her influence in household decision. The current study uses Pakistan demographic health survey 2017-18 to analyze the impact of family structure on child education through the channel of economic empowerment of women. We use two-step IV Linear Probability Model to test the hypothesis. And the estimated results indicate that woman living in nuclear family is more empowered and have strong impact on child education while on the other hand woman who is living in an extended family is less empowered as she has to compromise on her decision making power with extended family members regarding household matters and child education. Father’s presence and parental skilled occupation has significant influence over child education.