AIDS epidemic and the psychological well-being and school participation of Ethiopian orphans

Abstract

This paper modeled the proximate determinants of the scores on 60 items from Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI) and of school participation of approximately 1,000 children who had lost their mothers due to AIDS and from other causes using the data from a survey in Ethiopia. The scores on MMPI items reflecting emotional and social adjustment, and school participation before and after maternal deaths were modeled in a multi-disciplinary framework incorporating the time sequence of events. The main findings were that while AIDS orphans scored lower on MMPI items, variables such as presence of the father, household income, feeding and clothing conditions, and attitude of the fostering family were significant predictors of children's scores. Secondly, girls were at a disadvantage in terms of the scores on MMPI items. Third, variables such as income and good feeding and clothing conditions were significant predictors of school participation. Fourth, school participation before maternal death was an important predictor of subsequent school participation probabilities. An ordinal regression model was estimated to address certain methodological problems. Overall, the results indicated that economic subsidies to fostering households would enhance child welfare in Ethiopia.

Keywords:

• AIDS epidemic
• child welfare
• economic policy
• psychological well-being
• school participation

Acknowledgements

Without implication, the author thanks Gobena Daniel of the University of Addis Ababa for generously sharing the data, and the World Bank for partial support for the analyses. This revision has benefited from the detailed and thoughtful comments of the two reviewers and the Editor.