The thesis seeks to identify factors affecting children’s schooling, with special focus on child’s gender, parents’ role and preferences, and how the school participation outcome may be resource constrained.
Findings
The thesis confirms the hypothesis that mothers’ education positively affects children’s education, but more so for girls than for boys. Regarding fathers’ influence the results were more mixed showing some evidence of positive effects for both genders but also some negative effects for girls regarding continuation.
Westberg also studies resource constraints and concludes that overall poverty alleviation seems to be the center point in improving children’s schooling outcomes, whereas the role of land and education in bargaining deserves further scrutiny.
The comittee's evaluation of the thesis
Westberg participated in collecting data in the field. The combination of field work and thorough empirical analysis is impressive and well worth honoring, according to the evaluation committee. The committee consisted of Associate Professor Ingvild Almås, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and Professor Egil Matsen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Now an associate research fellow at ESOP
Westberg was awarded NOK 25.000 for her master thesis. The prize has also lead to a collaboration between her and ESOP. For the time being Westberg is a PhD student at NMBU with interests in Development Economics, and from this day on, she also is an associate research fellow at ESOP.