Education of biological and fostered children in Ghana: the influence of relationships with the household head and household structure

This study investigates how household structure and relationship with head of household impact on the education of children in Ghana. We estimate educational participation and selectivity-corrected educational progress conditional on participation and find that fostered children are less likely to participate in education. Fostered children in dual-parent headed households also make less educational progress compared with biological children. In single parent headed households, there is no significant equivalent difference in educational progress for fostered children and biological children. However, in single parent headed households with a high female-to-male labour force participation ratio, fostered children have lower educational progress than biological children.