Archive | 2019
Does Maternal Education Decrease Female Genital Cutting
Abstract
Female genital cutting (FGC) affects more than 200 million women globally. Education is often depicted as an effective instrument for abandoning the practice, but causal evidence is scant. This paper considers the introduction of the Universal Primary Education program as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of mothers’ education on the probability that their daughters are cut. Using the 1999 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, we find no statistically significant impact of the reform on the probability that their daughters undergo circumcision, which may be explained by an insignificant effect of the reform on maternal support for FGC.