To attend or not to attend: Examining the relationship between food hardship, school attendance and education expenditure

This study examines the relationship between food hardship, school attendance, and education expenditure using nationally representative data from a survey of 14,009 households in Ghana. After controlling for household, and geographical characteristics and using a standard instrumental variable approach to control for unobservable characteristics, we find a statistically significant negative relationship between food hardship and the number of children attending secondary, private, public, technical and vocational school, and expenditure on education. A differential analysis based on welfare stratification indicates a statistically significant positive relationship between food hardship and male children attending school, and the number of children attending private school for those in high-income households. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd