Testing the Intergenerational Persistence in Stream of Schooling: Evidence from Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

What drives parents to decide to send their children to a particular type or stream of schooling over another? Existing literature suggests that parents take several factors into account while making their children’s school choice: the academic reputation of the school, the distance between the child’s home and school, a stronger focus on religious studies perhaps. To attract students to be admitted to a particular type of schooling depends on how well that schooling is aligned with the demands of the parents. Thus, it is important to understand the reasons behind parents choosing particular types of schools over others. This study focuses on how parents, in Bangladesh, choose between religious and non-religious schooling for their children. We use the nationally representative Household and Income Expenditure Survey (HIES) data (2016) to explore whether there could be an intergenerational persistence of parents sending their children to the same stream of schooling they attended and we suggest that the reason behind such persistence may be explained by concepts of Behavioral Economics. We provide an overview of possible explanations as justification behind our hypothesis that an intergenerational persistence in the stream of schooling exists. We find that an intergenerational persistence in the stream of schooling does exist and that the persistence is stronger in the case of non-religious schooling compared to religious schooling.

KEYWORDS:

• Behavioral economics
• intergenerational persistence
• school choice
• secondary data analysis
• stream of schooling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the terms “madrasah schooling” and “religious schooling” interchangeably throughout our article.

2. We use the terms “conventional schooling” and “non-religious schooling” interchangeably throughout our article.