The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of household
wealth on opportunities to continue secondary education of students. Household
wealth was measured by the change of household wealth and the price elasticity of
household wealth. Opportunities to continue education were measured by the number
of completed education years in 1994, divided to 3 categories: Elementary, secondary
education and higher education. The hypothesis of this study was that household
wealth has a positive association with the opportunity to continue secondary
education. Ordered logistic regression and longitudinal data of Nangrong from 1984
and 1994 were employed for the analysis. The unit of analysis was children who were
5-12 years old in 1984. There were 6,881 cases in this study.
The opportunity to continue education was the dependent variable, while
independent variable was household wealth. There were 10 control variables in 3
domains: 1) Child characteristics (gender and age); 2) Family contexts (occupation of
father, type of household, member of household and education of parent); and 3)
Community factors (distance from village to secondary school, frequencies of buses to
secondary school, education proportion and availability of a secondary school)
The results revealed that in rural areas of the northeast, household wealth had
an influent on opportunities to continue secondary education. The change of
household wealth could better explain in opportunities to continue secondary
education than the price elasticity of household wealth, which better explained on
higher education progress. The student who was wealthy had more opportunities for
education than a student who was poor. Regarding the control variables, boys and
younger children had more opportunity than girls and older children. In addition,
children who resided in nuclear family with a low number of members in the
household, had parents who had completed grade 4 or higher, and whose families
were not employed in agricultural field had more opportunity to continue secondary
education than these who resided in an extended family, and who had parents
completed less than grade 4. Regarding to the community factors, children who
resided near a secondary school had more opportunities to continue secondary
education than those who resided far from a secondary school and low educational
proportion.
Findings of this study show that a secondary, school in a community was not
associated with opportunities to continue secondary education. While the frequency of
buses to secondary schools had a positive influent on opportunities to continue
secondary education. Active steps must be taken to increase others levels of
educations, such as higher education and adults’ education.
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