Access to Secondary Education in Albania: Incentives, Obstacles, and Policy Spillovers

Abstract

When judged either by educational attainment of adult population or by secondary and tertiary enrollment rates, by 2002 Albania compared very unfavorably to most European countries, including its neighbors. This study examines the determinants of secondary enrollment applying unobserved family effect probit model to data from Living Standards Measurement Survey 2002-2003. The focus of the paper is to investigate the importance of access to school and to further education for enrollment. We find that both absence of a secondary school in the community and the distance from the residence location to a secondary school have strong negative effect on enrollment, controlling for family background. In order to alleviate potential endogeneity bias of distance and community characteristics effects, we control for migration history of individuals since 1990. In rural areas, enrollment is impeded also by absence of a pre-school in the community, and by higher transportation cost from the community to its "main" secondary school. Proximity to a university city (as opposed to other urban centers) substantially increases likelihood of secondary enrollment in rural areas. In urban areas, a similar effect has emerged in 2003, plausibly as a response to opening the market for private universities. The above findings suggest that developing tertiary education and child-care system may have positive spillover effects on secondary enrollment.

Declining Secondary Enrollment in Albania: What Drives Household Decisions?

“…Our fi ndings are line with some of the conclusions from other recent work on this topic, including Palomba and Vodopivec (2001) and Hazans and Trapeznikova (2006), who draw on data from 1999 and 2002 respectively. Our replication of their fi ndings using later data and different proxies strengthens the conclusions that parental income and education, school access, and opportunity costs of children's' time are important factors in secondary schooling decisions in postsocialist Albania.…”

“…Our fi ndings support those of an earlier study by Geremia Palomba and Milan Vodopivec (2001) in fi nding that distance to school negatively affects enrollment, and a study by Michael Hazans and Ija Trapeznikova (2006) in fi nding that higher opportunity costs of children's time, measured by earning opportunities, also has a negative effect.…”

“…For urban children, we do fi nd some evidence that employment opportunities impact on schooling choice, as refl ected in the negative effect of district-level wages on enrollment. For rural children, in contrast, we fi nd that only child-care responsibilities, and not other work opportunities, are signifi cantly Our results conform more closely to those of Hazans and Trapeznikova (2006), which were also based on 2002 data. Although we use different proxies and different controls, and we are not able to control for school quality, we confi rm their fi ndings that access to schools, parental education, and employment opportunities affect enrollment.…”

Improving access to secondary education in Kenya: what can be done?

“…Hazans and Trapeznikova (2006) used Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) 2002‐2003 in Albania to investigate the determinants of secondary school enrollment. Absence of a secondary school in the community and the distance to the closest school had a strong negative effect on enrollment, even when family background was controlled.…”

“…Absence of a secondary school in the community and the distance to the closest school had a strong negative effect on enrollment, even when family background was controlled. Using the Albanian LSMS, Hazans and Trapeznikova (2006) showed the importance of supply‐side factors in promoting access to secondary education.…”