Impacts of Distance to School on School Enrollment in Urban and Rural Areas of Afghanistan

Abstract

After the forty years of war, one of the main challenges for the new Afghan government, established in 2001, was to bring back the almost 4 million children to the school by establishing new schools and by providing quality education. However, challenges remain, with low primary enrollment, particularly among females and in remote regions, and poor learning outcomes. School enrollment, being an essential factor for the development, was the main agenda for the governments and international organization. While, in many developing and underdeveloped countries the school enrollment is affected by various factors, in Afghanistan the distance to school is one of the main factor for the low school enrollment rate. Poverty, instability, school attacks, distance, travel dangers, economic concerns, corruption, and cultural traditions, which obstruct the education of females, all exacerbate access to education for families and communities, particularly in regional and rural areas. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to find out the impacts of the distance to school on school enrollment by using the “Survey of the Afghan people – The Asia Foundation” data of 2019. Due to the categorical nature of the dependent variable (School enrollment), I have used two identical ordered logistic regression models to measure the impact of the distance on male and female school enrollment separately. The main hypothesis of this study is that the longer distance to school decrease the school enrollment and this is even severe in case of female children and children and particularly for those living in rural areas. Overall, the analysis shows that the impact of distance on female enrollment is slightly higher than male enrollment. A one-minute increase in the distance to school has significant adverse impact on the school enrollment for children in Afghan villages. This severity of this impact is inconsistent between male and female students as well as in urban and rural areas. In addition, the unequal distribution of schools in rural and urban areas had a detrimental impact on school enrolment, and children in rural areas had to travel a greater distance than children in urban areas.