Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
2002
Abstract
An econometric analysis of the World Food Programme Civil Insecurity Baseline Survey (1998) and Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (1999) data is undertaken to examine the role of education and literacy in explaining household expenditure, as hypothesized in human capital theory where education is an investment with returns in the form of income. Explanatory variables were selected from a large set of observed variables by a systematic procedure to avoid the bias arising from arbitrary model selection. Spousal education and literacy are found to be significant explanatory variables in the determination of household expenditure, exceeding even the coefficients attached to the head of household. This suggests that educated and literate spouses may have a significant unobserved role in household consumption decisions and income determination in Cambodia. This finding builds on existing international literature on the importance of maternal and girls’ education in economic development and offers a number of important policy implications.
Discipline
Asian Studies | Behavioral Economics | Growth and Development
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
Publication
Asian Development Review
Volume
19
Issue
1
First Page
117
Last Page
138
ISSN
0217-4561
Publisher
Asian Development Bank
Citation
FUJII, Tomoki and EAR, Sophal.
How Does Spousal Education Matter? Some Evidence from Cambodia. (2002). Asian Development Review. 19, (1), 117-138.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/143
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.