Abstract
Excessive work among adolescents may compromise educational development. Without home appliances, household work can take over 50 h a week and an additional 30 h when an infant is present. School-aged girls are often tasked with doing laundry, which is time-consuming and inflexible without a washing machine. We determined the association between washing machine ownership and school attendance among adolescents ages 10–19 years in 19 middle-income countries between 2000 and 2021 (N = 1,622,514). We controlled for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, all neighborhood-level factors, and examined differences by sex, age, household wealth, and period. No relationship between washing machine ownership and school attendance was found in most countries: However, there was a substantial association for girls in Türkiye and a small to moderate association for girls in Egypt and Albania. In Türkiye, for example, girls living in households with a washing machine had 28% (95% CI 19, 37) greater school attendance compared to girls living in households which did not. No association was observed for boys. The results suggest that household ownership of a washing machine does generally not improve school attendance among girls, except possibly in specific contexts.
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Karlsson was funded by Vetenskapsradet (2019-06396).
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Karlsson did data management, analysis, and reporting and led the writing of the manuscript. De Neve contributed to the writing of the manuscript and provided critical review of the study.
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Karlsson, O., De Neve, JW. Washing machine ownership and girls' school attendance: a cross-sectional analysis of adolescents in 19 middle-income countries. J Econ Inequal (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-023-09612-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-023-09612-7