Does Mother’s Schooling Matter Most in Rural Bangladesh? Re-contextualizing an Old Debate in a New Era of School Reform

This paper explores the dynamic interplay between parental wealth, parental schooling,
government schooling initiatives and child schooling outcomes in rural Bangladesh. In doing so,
I engage with the vast literature that suggests mother’s schooling is the most important predictor
of offspring schooling attainment and empirically investigate whether this continues to be the
case in the context of recent waves of school reform. Methodologically, I improve upon past
estimates by using a gender-disaggregated measure of wealth that is exogenous to decision-making
in marriage: men’s and women’s assets at marriage. I run a series of Cox semi-proportional
hazard models estimating factors that predict rates of school entry and duration
between entry and exit, as well as OLS regression estimates of grade progression between entry
and exit. Findings indicate that mother’s schooling, and to some extent father’s schooling, are
important predictors of offspring attainment even after controlling for government schooling
initiatives and improved measures of wealth. Substantively, I argue for a re-contextualization of
the literature on household decision-making to better understand the nuanced interplay between
household factors and external programs and incentives in the context of mass schooling reform
in Bangladesh and around the globe.