Globally, significant progress has been made in primary school enrollment. However, there are millions of adolescents--including orphans in sub-Saharan Africa--who still experience barriers to remaining in school. We conducted a four-year cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) (N=835) in a high HIV prevalence area in western Kenya to test whether providing orphaned adolescents with a school support intervention improves their educational outcomes. The school support intervention consisted of directly paying tuition, exam fees, and uniform costs to primary and secondary schools for those students who remained enrolled. In addition, research staff monitored intervention participants’ school attendance and helped to address barriers to staying in school. This school support intervention had significant positive impacts on educational outcomes for orphaned adolescents. Over the course of the study, school absence remained stable for intervention group participants but increased in frequency for control group participants. Intervention group participants were less likely to drop out of school compared to the control group. Furthermore, the intervention participants were more likely to make age-appropriate progression in grade, matriculate into secondary school, and achieve higher levels of education by the end of the study. The intervention also increased students’ expectations of graduating from college in the future. However, we found no significant intervention impact on primary and secondary school test scores. Results from this cRCT suggest directly covering school-related expenses for male and female orphaned adolescents in western Kenya can improve their educational outcomes.

Women’s assessments of gender equality do not consistently match global indices of gender inequality. In surveys covering 150 countries, women in societies rated gender-unequal according to global metrics such as education, health, labor-force participation, and political representation did not consistently assess their lives as less in their control or less satisfying than men did. Women in these societies were as likely as women in index-equal societies to say they had equal rights with men. Their attitudes toward gender issues did not reflect the same latent construct as in index-equal societies, although attitudes may have begun to converge in recent years. These findings reflect a longstanding tension between universal criteria of gender equality and an emphasis on subjective understandings of women’s priorities.

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This study examines the extent of class and racial inequalities in cultural capital development among recent adolescent cohorts in the United States. Informed by several decades of cultural capital research, I compare participation in four dimensions of cultural capital proposed by prior scholarship—highbrow consumption, omnivorous consumption, technical capacity, and social competence—by using nationally representative time-diary data to test for group differences in time-use patterns. Time investment has been long theorized but seldom tested as the means through which individuals develop cultural capital. Activities associated with technical capacity appear to have the greatest potential as the bases for both class and racial exclusions, as group differences are evident in both the prevalence and duration of participation. Smaller race and class differences are evident for omnivorous consumption, and low participation in highbrow activities is evident across all groups. Distinct patterns of time-use among Asian American adolescents suggest they are simultaneously advantaged and disadvantaged in their cultural capital acquisition, speaking to debates regarding their relative status in the United States.

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