Washing machine ownership and girls' school attendance : a cross-sectional analysis of adolescents in 19 middle-income countries

Summary, in English

Excessive work among adolescents may compromise educational development. Without home appliances, household work can take over 50 h a week and an additional 30 h when an infant is present. School-aged girls are often tasked with doing laundry, which is time-consuming and inflexible without a washing machine. We determined the association between washing machine ownership and school attendance among adolescents ages 10–19 years in 19 middle-income countries between 2000 and 2021 (N = 1,622,514). We controlled for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, all neighborhood-level factors, and examined differences by sex, age, household wealth, and period. No relationship between washing machine ownership and school attendance was found in most countries: However, there was a substantial association for girls in Türkiye and a small to moderate association for girls in Egypt and Albania. In Türkiye, for example, girls living in households with a washing machine had 28% (95% CI 19, 37) greater school attendance compared to girls living in households which did not. No association was observed for boys. The results suggest that household ownership of a washing machine does generally not improve school attendance among girls, except possibly in specific contexts.

• Author: Omar Karlsson; Jan Walter De Neve
• Department/s: Centre for Economic Demography
• Publishing year: 2024-01-27
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Journal of Economic Inequality
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-023-09612-7
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Economic History
• Keywords: Household work; Middle-income countries; School attendance; Washing machine
• Status: Epub
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1569-1721