Schooling and rain : The relationship between annual precipitation and female schooling in Namibia between 2000 and 2013

Abstract: Investing in education is considered one of the most powerful factors in the work of reaching sustainable development, yet over 265 million children do not attend school (United Nations, 2018). Reduced agricultural productivity due to changes in climate may be one factor affecting schooling negatively. This thesis discusses the relationship between variations in annual precipitation and female schooling in Namibia between the years 2000 and 2013. The study performs fixed effect OLS regressions on cross-section data from the Demographic Health Survey. As Namibia has been, and is currently suffering drought conditions, we aim to discover whether precipitation affects schooling for girls, and if so, in what way. Two theoretical were created to analyse the results, where either the substitution effect or the income effect is visible. The thesis’ results indicate that when annual precipitation increases with one millimetre, female schooling decreases on average with 0,0281 years, which equals to approximately 1,5 weeks. The reason for this is argued to be the opportunity cost connected to schooling, which is sufficiently too high for households to let their female children attend school. Due to the increased agricultural productivity leading to higher salaries and lower prices, the cost of schooling increases and will lead to decreased female schooling.