Determinants Of School Drop-out Decision In Malawi: Using The Malawi Integrated Household Survey

In this research paper,we study the determinants of school dropout in Malawi.The study targets primary school and secondary school students.We investigate and explore the factors that lead to students' decision to drop out of school.Dropping out in this paper means leaving school before the complete cycle therefore in addition to general school dropout,we investigate dropouts in different levels of schooling.Our analysis uses the micro-data from the World Bank surveys called Malawi Integrated Household Survey and the Integrated Household Panel Survey 2016.Our results show and confirm those factors,which were obtained by other scholars in both empirical and theoretical literature,and factors that are mostly observed in Sub-Saharan Africa for instance,family socioeconomic status,school start age,institutional factors like infrastructures and teaching practices and attitudes.However,we go on further and show that household income may as have both positive and negative correlation on dropout especially in rural areas.In addition,food scarcity is also an important factor,which has a negative impact on dropout,and our explanation is that due to food insecurity in the household,students who are in the schools where they provide food are unlikely to drop out of school.A strong indication for school dropout shows that there are more cases of dropouts in primary school level than the levels above,which could explain the controversy of Free Primary Education(FPE).The researcher therefore,suggest that if free education duration is prolonged to middle school level,there may be an increase in the likelihood that students may stay longer in school and reduce dropout rates.