Household Decision-Making Process: It’s Effect on School Dropout Behavior for Girls in the Secondary School Level in Bangladesh

This study aims to understand the parents’ household decision-making process with respect to allowing girls to drop out of school, an area that has, thus far, been overlooked in the research regarding school dropouts. This paper has examined the household decision-making process between fathers and mothers and explores how their respective levels of participation affect on the educational outcome for girls. Data were collected in September 2010 from questionnaires administered to the parents of female students in the sub-district of Pirgonj in Bangladesh. The individual participation index (PI) of both the fathers and the mothers was estimated for four major household matters, and the bargaining level of fathers and mothers was measured by comparing the participation indices. Logistic regression was then conducted to examine how the participation levels of fathers and mothers predicted dropout outcomes for girls. The results show that mothers had less bargaining power than fathers in the decision-making process as the mean for the mother’s participation index is found to be “rarely”, while the father’s index is found to be “very often” when using a 5-point Likert-typescale. In the logistic regression model, the participation levels of fathers and mothers indicate diverse effects on dropout outcomes in which the father’s participation positively predicts the dropout outcome for girls and the mother’s participation negatively predicts the dropout outcome for girls.