Family structure, gender of the household head and child opportunities in Addis Ababa: an analysis from 1994 Ethiopian census and 2000 Ethiopian DHS data

Aurora Angeli, Università di Bologna
Silvana Salvini, University of Florence

This paper examines the structure and the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the families of Addis Ababa to understand the differences according to the sex of the household head, using data deriving from 1994 Census and 2000 DHS survey. The temporal lag permits us to verify the eventual changes. We are interested not only to verify changes in the family structure, but also to explore if the sex of the household head influences child opportunities in terms of schooling and of human capital formation. In fact, our first results of Census data underline that, also in the urban context, Ethiopia is characterised by a strong gender inequality that affects both the socio-economic characteristics of the female-headed families and children education. Also in the households with more educated female leaders, where schooling enrolment of young generations is higher, sons show higher education levels and then it appears that son preference persists.