THE CAUSAL IMPACT OF GHANA’S FREE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL POLICY ON FEMALE EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND EARLY-LIFE DEMOGRAPHIC OUTCOMES.

Sammanfattning

Using a sharp Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), this study analyzes the causal effects of Ghana's Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy on female educational attainment and fertility-related outcomes. This entry is motivated by the understanding that providing easier, more affordable access to secondary schooling has largely encouraged girls' and young women's (youth) educational participation. However, it remains unclear whether reducing financial barriers has broader demographic effects.Methods, Data sources, measurement, and analysis. The 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) is a nationally representative survey with detailed data on education, fertility behavior, household composition, and socioeconomic conditions. The identification strategy exploits the discontinuity in policy eligibility at date-of-birth cutoffs corresponding to exposure to the Free SHS reform. This design compares individuals born on either side of an eligibility threshold, assuming they are otherwise similar except for exposure to the policy. Finally, heterogeneity analyses, robustness checks, and placebo tests assess the robustness of treatment-effect estimates using local linear regression and robust, bias-corrected inference.The results show that Free SHS had a substantial impact on girls' educational attainment. Policy exposure yielded positive increases in years of schooling across several specifications. The estimated effects ranged from 0.487 to 1.02 additional years of schooling, depending on specification choice. The heterogeneity analysis also indicates that the main effects were concentrated among high-poverty households and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, suggesting that the policy's impact primarily occurred through reductions in the direct costs of schooling.By contrast, evidence is scarce that the policy had a large impact on fertility-related outcomes over the observable sample horizons. However, the estimated effects for these outcomes are not statistically significant, and the coefficients have signs consistent with previous literature. The results show that Free SHS significantly increased girls' educational participation, but the demographic impacts may require longer time horizons to take effect.The overall conclusion drawn is that secondary education can be made significantly more affordable and provide a boon for female educational attainment in developing countries while narrowing the gender gap in educational achievement. Yet the full potential of these reforms for sustained impact may lie in investments to further improve the quality of education, education infrastructure, and education governance, as well as broader social support systems.