A Tale of Two Cities: Settlement Disparities in School Achievement in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)

Idrissa Ouili, Université de Montréal
Ismael Mourifié, University of Toronto

In Ouagadougou, at least 33% of the 2 million inhabitants live in informal settlements. This subpopulation lacks social infrastructure and has extremely low education attainments. In this paper, taking into account the possible endogeneity of the number of children in the family by using a two-step control function approach with Probit models, we investigate the differences in families’ behaviour towards schooling between formal and informal settlements in the Capital of Burkina Faso. We focus in particular on the trade-off between child quantity and quality. Given the heterogeneity of the two types of settlements, we use the predicted probabilities for comparison. Our results suggest the existence of settlement-specific unobserved heterogeneity, which creates a comparative advantage from living in formal settlements. Regarding families’ behaviour towards schooling, our results suggest some evidence of a trade-off between child quantity and quality in formal settlements but not in informal ones.