Les enfants non scolarisés en milieu urbain : une comparaison des déterminants intra familiaux, inter familiaux et des effets de voisinage dans sept capitales ouest africaines

This cross-country study examines the determinants of school attendance through household surveys conducted the same year in seven West African countries. The aim of this comparison, based on the relatively homogeneous population of urban households living in the capitals, is to look at national differences. We used a tree-level logit model allowing to decompose the unobserved heterogeneity between a within family effect, a between families effect and a neighbourhood effect. The results show that the generalized pattern that explains the out of schooling for all these countries is the discrimination within the family towards some children, namely girls. Although this study has been based on comparable populations with similar rates of schooling the disparities in the impact of household characteristics on child schooling among the countries highlight the importance of the economical and cultural context. Children living in the poorest households are less likely to go to school except for great size families, which seems to indicate different types of family behaviour to cope with limited resources. Large households in Dakar tend to treat their children in a more egalitarian way regarding school attendance but their well being depends on the family income. On the contrary in Cotonou where families are of small size, children of very poor families have the same probability to go to school as wealthier ones and it is above all due to discrimination between children within the family that some of them do not attend school.