The impact of social capital on children educational outcomes: The case of Tanzania

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between social capital and children’ educational outcomes in Tanzania, using panel data from the Kagera Health and Development Survey (KHDS). By exploiting the panel structure of the data, we use several econometric techniques - fixed effect, first difference and 2SLS - to address social capital endogeneity issue and omitted variable bias. We find evidence that social capital available in the family affects significantly student attainment and that the magnitudes are large enough to explain a substantial proportion of variation in children schooling in Tanzania in the short term. More importantly, this positive impact lasts over the long term.