Report on the Global HIV/AIDS epidemic

Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic - June 2000

Information collected in large household surveys representative of the general population confirms the general assumption that children whose parents have both died
are less likely to be in school than children who are living with one or both parents
(see Figure 11).

Figure 11.
% 100
90
80 -
70 -
60 -
50 -
40 -
30 -
20
10 -

Proportion of children aged 10-14 who are still in school
according to whether their parents are alive, surveys in
various countries, 1994-1998
c0 -Ca 0= =CO oC_ 0)
0 ' 00() 0 C 0 a)
2 C 1...... -E

1 11 living with one or both parents H both parents dead
Source: Demographic and Health Surveys, Macro International, USA, and UNICEF, 2000
The impact of parental AIDS is not necessarily a direct one or seen only in children
who have already been orphaned. A child's schooling may be temporarily interrupted
by a shortage of cash occasioned by spending on a parent's ill-health or by periods
of work in the home to help sick parents. By the time children are actually orphaned,
they are likely to be over-age for their class, even if they are still in school. This was
the case in both the Zimbabwean and Kenyan studies cited here. Being older than
their classmates was in turn associated with a higher rate of dropping out of school
for a number of other reasons, including pregnancy and the need to take paying
work. Many of the marriages that led to drop-out were arranged, so it is quite possible that relatives or sick parents themselves saw marrying a girl off as a relatively
painless way of ensuring that she would be cared for after their death. In at least one
study of orphans in Kenya, boys tended to give economic reasons for dropping out
of primary school (64% said they could not afford fees or needed to earn cash from

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