Effects of Mother Tongue Education on Schooling and
Child Labor Outcomes
Tihtina Zenebe Gebre
Economics Department, University of Notre Dame
Fall 2014
Abstract
This paper investigates the effects of mother tongue education on schooling and
child labor outcomes by exploiting the 1990’s language policy reform of Ethiopia. The
reform mandated the use of students’ mother tongue as a medium of instruction in
primary school instead of the country’s national language, Amharic. Using variations
across cohorts and languages in exposure to the policy, I use a difference-in-differences
identification strategy to evaluate effects of the reform. My results suggest that among
non-Amharic language speakers in rural areas of the country, there was a 6 percentage
points decline in enrollment and about 0.4 years of reduction in schooling due to full
exposure to the reform. I also find that the reform led to a significant increase in
the probability of children as young as 5 years old engaging in some form of work.
Boys were 2.3 percentage points more likely to participate in paid work in response to
the reform, while girls were 4.1 percentage points more likely to participate in unpaid
family work. Qualitative evidence suggests that poor implementation of the policy
without proper training of teachers who are proficient in non-Amahric languages and
inadequate supply of pedagogical materials may partly explain the unintended effects
of the policy during this transition period.
JEL: I24, I25, J13.
1
1
Introduction
Language of instruction is one of the primary determinants of effective classroom communication. Globally, many countries with multiple languages have required a single language
to dominate their education sectors (UNESCO, 1953, 2003). This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in Africa. Depending on different estimates and definitions, the number of
languages spoken in Africa ranges between 1,000 and 2,500 (Gadelii, 2004). However, only
176 of these African languages are used in education, and for many languages, their use is
often limited to informal education programs (UNESCO, 2010). In formal education, most
African countries use the language of their historical colonizers or the language of a dominant
ethnic group. The use of unfamiliar languages as a medium of instruction is often mentioned
as an important source of low enrollment rates, retention rates, literacy levels and academic
achievement.1
Recently, in response to poor educational outcomes and political pressure, a number
of Sub-Saharan African countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia and South
Africa have taken measures to include local languages in their formal education sectors,
a practice often referred to as mother tongue instruction (MTI). Theoretically, the effect
of MTI is ambiguous. On the one hand, a number of studies argue that MTI is superior
to second language instruction in facilitating effective classroom communication, thereby
increasing access and quality of education.2 On the other hand, the use of a local language
as a medium of instruction can lead to lower proficiency in national and/or international
languages, which are often a medium of instruction in post-primary education and have
higher labor market returns. If parents and students believe that MTI limits academic and
job market success, families might have lower valuation for education in their mother tongue
and the policy may then lead to the reduction of educational attainment. Lack of trained
1
Alidou et al., (2006) state that the use of non-local languages forces teachers to use traditional and
instructor-centered teaching methods, which undermine students’ effort to learn. These problems are exacerbated if the language of instruction is also foreign to parents and caregivers as it poses barriers to their
involvement in their children’s education.
2
See reviews in Baker (2001) and Cummins (2000).
2
teachers who are proficient in local languages and inadequate supply of pedagogical materials
can further reduce the effectiveness of MTI policies in improving educational attainment.
The impact of mother tongue education on schooling is ultimately an empirical question.
Unfortunately, this area lacks insightful guidance from carefully done empirical studies.
This paper attempts to fill this void by empirically investigating the effects of MTI on
educational attainment. I examine an early 1990s language policy reform in Ethiopia that
mandated the use of students’ mother tongue as a medium of instruction during primary
school instead of the country’s national language, Amharic. The policy was rolled out
incrementally, beginning with the major ethnic languages. In subsequent years, a significant
number of minority languages were included in the MTI policy. Currently, more than 30 of
the country’s 80 plus languages are being used as a medium of instruction in part or all of
primary school.
I combine cross-language variations in the impact of the reform with cross-cohort variations in the length of exposure to the policy and employ a difference-in-differences estimation
strategy. This allows me to control for systematic variations in schooling both across languages and across cohorts. My results suggest that full exposure (eight years exposure) to
the new language policy led to 6 percentage point reduction in enrollment and more than
0.4 years decline in years of schooling, in rural areas of Ethiopia.
In addition to effects on schooling, such language policies can potentially affect child labor
outcomes. The allocation of children’s time across different activities, such as schooling,
household chores and paid employment depends on the relative returns of such activities
(Basu and Van, 1998 and Baland; Robinson, 2000).3 A decline in quality of education due
to poor implementation of MTI policies and/or lower labor market returns to schooling in
mother tongue languages may lead to reduced school attendance and as a result, increased
child labor. Therefore, to the extent that a language policy reform affects education quality
and returns to schooling, it can also have a corresponding effect on children’s labor supply.
3
Edmonds (2007) provides an extensive review of theoretical and empirical studies on child labor.
3
Exploiting the rich information in the 2001 Child Labor Survey of Ethiopia, I explore
several channels that may link the effects of the reform on schooling with its effects on
child labor outcomes both inside and outside the household. I find that the reform led to a
significant increase in the probability of working for children as young as 5 years old. More
specifically, I find 1.4 percentage points increase in paid employment due to full exposure to
the new language policy. I also show that the reform had a differential impact on male and
female children. Boys were 2.3 percentage points more likely to participate in paid work in
response to the reform, while girls were 4.1 percentage points more likely to participate in
unpaid family work. Furthermore, subsequent to the reform, parents in affected language
groups were more likely to report work as the main reason for children’s absence from
school. This provides some suggestive evidence that the reform might have lowered the value
households give to their children’s education, leading to reduced educational attainment and
increased labor supply.
2
Existing Literature
This paper makes contributions to at least two fields of literatures. First, the paper contributes to the literature assessing educational language policies and their impacts on schooling outcomes. Second, my analysis of the effects of MTI on children’s labor supply adds to a
broader literature that aims to evaluate the effects of public policy programs on child labor
outcomes.
There are a number of channels proposed in the literature through which MTI policies can
improve educational attainment. The use of one’s mother tongue, at least in the early years
of schooling, can facilitate the acquisition of literacy skills as well as improve participation in
the classroom (Baker, 2001 and Cummins, 2000). Moreover, it may alleviate the burden of
understanding content material while simultaneously learning a foreign language. Mastering
one’s first language may also promote cognitive developments that are needed to learn a
4
second language.4 Such language policies also facilitate the use of minority languages in
education, which in turn can be instrumental in developing self-reliance and psychological
motivation in children from marginalized groups.5 Through these channels and potentially
others, MTI can lead to higher enrollment, increased educational attainment as well as
improved adult outcomes.
The use of MTI in primary school, on the other hand, can lead to reduced proficiency
in national and/or international languages, which are often used as a medium of instruction
in higher education. Therefore, the benefits of mother tongue education might not extend
beyond primary school and MTI policies can potentially lead to lower attainment in higher
education. Moreover, students must be proficient in national and international languages
to participate meaningfully in the social and political lives of their societies (Gupta, 2010).
Proficiency in national and international languages can also have significant labor market
returns.6 Therefore, MTI policies that use local languages in education might lower the
valuation households give to education leading to reduced investment in children’s schooling. Inadequate preparation by governments prior to the implementation of such extensive
reforms may further lead to low quality of schooling and poor educational outcomes (Wolff,
2004).
However, despite the important roles language policies play in most countries’ education
systems, there are very few studies that empirically investigate their impacts on schooling. In
a widely cited study, Alidou et al. (2006) assess the experiences of mother tongue education
programs in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries and find that the use of MTI for at
least 6 six years of primary school will considerably improve educational attainment. The
study has small samples, mostly uses qualitative methods, and does not address the issue of
endogeneity. Bagamose (1984) in Nigeria and Benson (2000, 2001) in Mozambique find that
4
The pedagogical principles behind this positive transfer of skills are discussed in detail in Cummins
(1999).
5
See Skuttnab-Kangas (1997 and 2000) for detailed discussions on the advantages of using minority
languages in education.
6
Angrist and Lavy (1997), Munshi and Rosenzweig (2006) and Chakraborty and Kapur (2008) provide
empirical evidence that supports this claim.
5
lengthening the use of MTI in primary school leads to lower grade repetition and increased
classroom participation.7 Although these studies use experimental methods to assess effects
of MTI, several other differences between the treatment and control classrooms in terms of
educational materials, teaching methodology, and quality of teachers make it difficult to fully
attribute the results to differences in length of MTI exposure.8 My paper is one of the first
large scale assessments of a plausibly exogenous MTI policy experiment on educational and
child labor outcomes, and indeed my results differ markedly from theirs.
A closely related study to this paper is a working paper by Ramachandran (2012), which
also uses the 1990s language policy reform in Ethiopia. Using data from the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of Ethiopia, the author finds that MTI led to a one-year
increase in primary school attainment in urban areas. I improve up on Ramachandran (2012)
in the following ways. In addition to the DHS data sets, I use the 1994 and 2007 Ethiopian
censuses.9 The censuses have a crucial advantage over the DHS data sets, in that they
cover all the 80 plus languages of the country while the DHS surveys contain only four language groups. I have also collected detailed information on the implementation process of
the reform including the exact date of adoption for all the languages included in the MTI
policy.10 Using the detailed language information in the censuses along with cross-language
differences in the implementation process, I develop an identification strategy that exploits
all the variation in the impact of the reform across languages and across cohorts. In contrast
to Ramachandran (2012), I conduct most of my analysis focusing on rural areas.11 . In urban
areas, in order to accommodate migrant communities, Amharic is often offered as a medium
7
Bagamose (1984) evaluates an experiment in Nigeria titled the Six-Year Primary Project (SYPP). The
SYPP experiment compares the traditional policy of using Yoruba (a major Nigerian language) as medium
of instruction for the first 3 years of schooling followed by English instruction with a new language policy
of using Yoruba as a medium of instruction for 6 years of primary school. Benson (2000, 2001) analyzes
experiments in two different regions of Mozambique, which extended the use of the corresponding Bantu
languages (Xichangana and Cinyanja) in primary school before transitioning to Portuguese.
8
Benson (2001) provides detailed discussion on the problems involved in the comparison of the treatment
and control groups in the Mozambique experiment.
9
I am able to replicate the results of Ramachandran (2012) using the DHS data sets. However all the
results I present in this paper are based on the census data sets and the 2001 Child Labor Survey of Ethiopia.
10
Ramachandran (2012) assumes that all languages were adopted in 1994.
11
More than 80 percent of the country’s population lives in rural areas
6
of instruction along with local languages, sometimes within the same school and households
can actively choose the language of instruction for their children. Thus, the reform does
not necessarily provide exogenous variation in exposure to MTI. By focusing on rural areas,
I am able to address such endogenity concerns regarding educational language choices by
households.
The second significant contribution of the paper is its investigation of MTI’s impact
on children’s labor force participation. I am not aware of any other study that examines
the relationship between language policy reforms and child labor outcomes.12 This paper
is the first to relate the effects of MTI on schooling with its effects on children’s labor
supply inside and outside the household. In this regard, the paper relates to a body of
work that examines the effects of public policy programs on the incidence of child labor.
For example, Rosati and Rossi (2007) examine the effects that two different types of policy
interventions, namely enhancing school quality and contingent cash transfers, have on child
labor in Mexico. Their findings suggest that school quality programs are not only effective
in increasing school attendance, but also act as deterrents to child labor. Similarly, de Hoop
and Rosati (2013) argue that public policy programs including social protection programs,
education interventions and labor market oriented interventions can reduce children’s labor
force participation. As of yet, there are no such studies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results
from this paper add to this nascent literature, by providing evidence on the unintended
effects of a language policy reform on child labor outcomes in Ethiopia.
12
There are a few of studies including Angrist Lavy (1997) in Morocco and Rendon (2006) in Catalonia
that show that language policies have significant effects on adult labor market outcomes. Angrist and Lavy
(1997) show that the elimination of compulsory French instruction led to a substantial reduction in the
returns to schooling for affected cohorts while Rendon (2006) finds 3 to 5 percentage points increase in the
probability of being employed as a result of fluency in Catalan. Another related literature that examines the
importance of language skills in the labor market is the literature on immigrant communities in developed
nations. Some of the most important works in this literature look at immigrant communities in Australia
(Chiswick and Miller 1999), Canada (Carliner 1981 and Chiswick and Miller 2003), Germany (Dustmann
and Soest 2002), Israel (Chiswick and Repetto 2001), UK (Dustmann and Fabbri 2000) and USA (Bleakley
and Chin 2004, Chiswick 1978, Chiswick and Miller 2002 ).These studies have almost unanimously found
that language skills have positive effects on earnings.
7
3
Background
3.1
Educational Language Policies of Ethiopia
The 2007 census of Ethiopia identified over 80 different ethnic groups with distinct languages.
Despite the presence of such extensive linguistic diversity in the country, Amharic, a language
that originated from the Amhara region, served as the sole medium of instruction in primary
school throughout much of the country’s modern education history. English was used as a
language of instruction in higher grades. Until 1974, the country was a feudal empire under
a monarchy system, the rulers of which primarily hailed from the Amhara ethnic group.
During this period, the dominant Amhara rulers used cultural assimilation as a means of
bringing unity in this multi-ethnic empire. A chief instrument used to achieve this cultural
assimilation was the imposition of the Amharic language as the country’s national language
(Clapham, 1988 and Merera, 2002). It is this historical occurrence that lead to the adoption
of Amharic as a medium of instruction.13
In 1991, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took power.
The EPRDF enacted policies substantially different from the previous regimes in that they
acknowledged the ethno-linguistic diversity of the country. Nine ethnic based regions (Afar,
Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, Harari, Oromiya, SNNPRR, Somali and Tigray)
and two city administrations (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) were established. These regions,
which are shown in Figure 1, are further divided into zones (geographic areas comparable
to counties in the U.S.). In terms of language policies, the government promoted the use
of local languages for official, administrative, judiciary and educational purposes. Amharic
was issued as the working language of the central government and remained the national
13
In 1974 the country went through a revolution. The monarchy was overthrown and a military dictatorship
came to power. During this period, the first efforts to incorporate other languages into the education system
began. For example, adult literacy programs were initiated in 15 different languages (Getachew and Derib,
2008). The fifteen languages were Amharic, Oromigna, Wolaytigna, Somaligna, Hadiyigna, Kembatigna,
Tigrigna, Tigre, Sidamigna, Gedeogna, Afarigna, Kafa-Mochinga, Sahogna, Kunamigna and Siltigna. Some
languages had a written version introduced for the first time using the Ethiopic or Latin scripts. However
the use of languages other than Amharic was confined to the non-formal education sector and Amharic
continued to dominate formal education in primary school.
8
language of the country.
In the education sector, the new language policy mandated the use of students’ mother
tongue languages as a medium of instruction in primary grades followed by English instruction in post-primary education. Amharic was to be taught as a subject in all regions and
remained as a medium of instruction for Amharic native speakers. However, most languages
in Ethiopia historically did not have a written form and this complicated the implementation
process greatly. The lack of trained manpower proficient in these languages and the absence
of written materials such as books and newspapers further impeded the process. Therefore,
many languages were adopted as a medium of instruction very recently and many of them
are being used only for part of primary school.
Table 1 lists the languages that are currently included in the MTI policy and the regions
where they are being used as a medium of instruction. In order to compile this information, I
conducted in-person and phone interviews with officials at the central Ministry of Education
and regional education bureaus. Through these interviews, I gathered detailed information
on the implementation process of the policy in each region, including year of adoption for
each language and the length of use as a medium of instruction. I present this information in
the third and fourth columns of Table 1. From this table, we can see that there is variation
across languages in adoption year, ranging from 1991 for Tigrigna to as recent as 2013 for
Afar. In addition, there is significant variation in the length of use. For example, Oromigna
is being used as medium of instruction for 8 years of primary school in Oromia region, while a
large number of languages in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP) region
are being tried out only in the first three grades of primary school.
3.2
Other reforms in the education system of Ethiopia
There were other reforms in the education sector that were contemporaneous to the language
policy reform. In 1994, primary school fees were eliminated in all regions of the country in
order to reduce the burden of schooling on parents (Ministry of Education, 1999). There
9
were also structural changes in the education system. The structure of pre-college education
used to be 6-2-4 and was replaced by the 8-2-2 structure. The former divided the first 8
years of education into 6 years of primary school and 2 years of middle school followed by
4 years of secondary education and a national examination was administered at the end of
each cycle. The latter offers 8 years of primary education followed by 4 years of secondary
education. The national examination at grade 6 was eliminated following the reform and a
new one was instated at grade 10 while national examinations at grades 8 and 12 remained
in place.
These changes in the education sector can have significant effects on schooling outcomes;
therefore, it is imperative to take them into account while attempting to isolate the effects of
the language policy reform. An important aspect of these contemporaneous reforms is that
they were mainly spearheaded by the federal government and were implemented nationally
at the same time. The abolition of school fees, in particular, was part of a general trend in
Sub-Saharan Africa towards free primary education. In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, often
with the support of development agencies and nongovernmental organizations, countries such
asEthiopia, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia have all eliminated primary school fees. In
Ethiopia, speakers of all languages including Amharic language speakers were affected by
these reforms while only languages that were included in the MTI reform were affected by
the new language policy.
Therefore, using the Amharic language speakers as my control group, I am able to estimate the effects of the language policy isolated from the effects of other changes in the
country. Furthermore, I exploit various details in the implementation process of the policy
to show that the effects are very similar across most affected groups. For example, exploiting
cross-language differences in adoption year, I show that there are similar negative effects of
the policy on all language groups that adopted MTI before or after the 1994 education policy
reforms.
10
4
Data
The individual level data used in the main analysis of this study comes from a 10 percent
sample of the 2007 census of Ethiopia. The census data, which is distributed by the Central
Statistical Agency of Ethiopia, contains detailed information on basic demographic characteristics including age, sex, region of residence (including urban/rural categories), religion,
mother tongue language and, educational attainment.
For my main analysis, I focus on languages that were adopted in or before 1997. This
allows me to observe fully and partially affected cohorts as adults in the 2007 census. I
also exclude Tigrigna language speakers and the Tigray region from my main analysis. The
Tigray region, a neighboring region to Eritrea, is ethnically and linguistically very similar
to the main ethnic group in Eritrea. Due to this geographic and ethno-cultural proximity,
the region greatly suffered during the long civil war that led to the 1991 revolution and
subsequently to the secession of Eritrea. Therefore, reconstruction efforts in the advent of
peace in the early 1990s would have extensive and disproportionate impact on the region.
This, in turn, renders the task of isolating the effects of the concurrent language policy
reform very difficult; hence I limit my analysis to the remaining languages.
In this study, I focus on individuals aged 17 to 40 years in 2007. Using this sample, Panel
A of Table 2 presents summary statistics for the three language groups, namely, Amharic
language speakers, non-Amharic language speakers affected by the MTI reform and nonAmharic language speakers whose language was never used as a medium of instruction.
Overall, the three language groups have very comparable observable characteristics. The
average respondent in my sample is about 27 years old and has a little more than one year
of schooling. The Amharic language speakers have slightly lower educational attainment
compared to language groups affected by MTI, however the differences are not statistically
significant.
In addition to the census data, I use the 2001 Child Labor Survey (CLS) of Ethiopia
in order to investigate the effects of MTI on child labor outcomes. This survey, which
11
is the first of its kind in the country, was also collected and distributed by the Central
Statistics Agency. Similar to the census, the survey contains information on respondents’
basic demographic characteristics and educational attainment. However, this survey does
not collect information on individuals’ mother tongue languages, instead asks questions on
their ethnicity. In Ethiopia, especially in rural areas, ethnicity and mother tongue language
are highly correlated.14 Exploiting this fact, I use respondents’ ethnicity as a proxy for their
mother tongue language in the CLS.
In addition to demographic characteristics, the CLS survey contains information on the
labor market status of all individuals aged 5 years or older. According to the International
Labor Organization (ILO), child labor is a narrow concept, which refers to work that is
mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and interferes
with their school. The information available in the CLS, however, does not allow me to
define child labor in a way that fully complies with the ILO definition. For the purposes of
this paper, children’s economic activity or children’s work is used as a proxy for child labor
and the terms are used interchangeably.
Within this broad definition, I construct several variables that indicate respondents’
engagement in various forms of economic activities including participation in any type of
work (paid or unpaid), self-employment, unpaid family work or paid work. For children
aged 5-17, the survey collects additional information on their school enrollment status and
the various reasons that are keeping them from school, if that is the case. Parents are
also asked questions on their preferences regarding their children’s time allocation between
school and work. I use this information to explore if and how the MTI reform has affected
the value parents put on schooling as well as the demand for child labor. The survey also
contains questions on whether or not the child has been physically harmed while working,
if the parent thinks that there are physical risks involved with the tasks her child performs
and whether or not protective gear is commonly used by others who are engaged in similar
14
Using the 2007 census, I find that the correlation between ethnicity and mother tongue language is
greater than 0.94.
12
work. I use the responses to these questions to construct indicator variables that measure
the hazardous nature of the work the child participates in.
I present summary statistics using the CLS survey in Panel B of Table 2. My sample
includes individuals aged 5 to 25 at the time of the survey. The average respondent is about
13 years old and has less than a year of schooling. More than 60 percent of my sample
is engaged in some type of work (paid or unpaid) and less than 2 percent of non-Amharic
language speakers and about 4 percent of Amharic speakers report participating in paid
employment.
5
Research Design
5.1
Measuring Exposure to Mother Tongue Instruction
Exposure to mother tongue education is jointly determined by an individual’s mother tongue
language, year of birth and region of education. Among the non-Amharic language speakers
whose mother tongue is affected by the reform, any individual who enrolled in school before
the new policy would have no exposure to mother tongue education, as she would be educated
in Amharic followed by English instruction. On the other hand, if the individual enrolled in
school in or after the year the reform took effect and studied in a region where her mother
tongue language is offered as a medium of instruction, then she would have exposure to MTI.
The length of exposure will depend on how long her mother tongue is used as a medium
of instruction in primary school. Given this, I construct my treatment group of all pre and
post reform cohorts, whose mother tongue is offered as a medium of instruction in the region
they live in, due to the new language policy.
If an individual who is a native speaker of Amharic enrolled in school prior to the reform,
then she would be initially educated in Amharic, followed by English instruction. If she
enrolled in school in or after the year the reform took effect and studied in the Amhara
region, again she would be exposed to 8 years of primary school in Amharic. Therefore,
13
Amharic native speakers who lived in the Amhara region will have full exposure to mother
tongue education in primary school before and after the reform. Given this, I construct
my control sample, using all pre and post reform cohorts, whose mother tongue language is
Amharic and who live in the Amhara region.
In Table 3, I present an illustrative example of the cross-cohort variation in exposure to
MTI for my control and treatment groups. For demonstration purposes, I assume that the
MTI policy took effect in 1992 and is used as medium of instruction for 8 years of primary
school. The first two rows of Table 3 present individuals’ year of birth and their age at
the time of the 2007 census, while rows 3 and 4 present individuals’ age and grade in 1992
(i.e. when the language was adopted as a medium of instruction). The grade calculations
in row 4 assume on time enrollment at age 7 and no grade repetition, hence I refer to them
as potential grades. Based on these potential grades, I calculate potential exposure to MTI,
which is defined as the fraction of primary grades under the new language policy. The
fifth and sixth rows of Table 3 present the variations in potential exposure to MTI for the
non-Amharic and Amharic language speakers, respectively.
However, late enrollment and grade repetition are very common in the Ethiopian education system. Therefore, it is very likely for older cohorts to be fully or partially exposed to
mother tongue education. Using similar mechanisms as Borkum (2010) and Chicoine (2012),
I use pre-reform data on enrollment age and grade repetition rates to calculate each cohort’s
and language group’s expected exposure to MTI.
15
The average enrollment age during this
period is around age 11 and the grade specific repetition and progression rates are presented
in Table 4.16 Expected exposures to MTI, which are calculated using these data, are presented in the sixth and seventh rows of Table 3, for the non-Amharic and Amharic language
speakers respectively.
In general, for individuals whose mother tongue is one of the languages listed in Table
15
I obtained the pre reform average enrollment age as well as repetition and progression rates for each
primary grade from annual reports by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education for the 1988 academic year.
16
Progression rates account for dropout rates.
14
1, I apply the same procedure to calculate each cohort’s exposure to MTI while accounting
for the language specific year of adoption and the length of use as a medium of instruction.
The remaining language groups whose mother tongue languages have never been offered as
a medium of instruction, on the other hand, will have zero exposure for all pre and post
reform cohorts.
Given these variations in exposure to MTI, a comparison of pre and post-reform educational attainment for the treatment and control language groups provides some evidence for
the impact of the reform. Focusing on the major ethnic groups of the country that adopted
MTI in 1992, I conduct such comparisons in figures 2 and 3, where I have plotted mean enrollment rates and mean years of schooling respectively for Amharic and non-Amharic language
speakers. The figures show that, both the Amharic and non-Amharic language speakers had
very low educational attainment historically. Furthermore, among older cohorts born before
the early 1980s, Amharic speakers had marginally worse educational outcomes compared
to non-Amharic language speakers. In subsequent years, both language groups experienced
substantial increases in enrollment and years of schooling. These rapid increases in schooling
outcomes suggests that policy reforms such as the elimination of primary school fees were
effective in improving educational attainment of both the treatment and control language
groups. However, starting with the 1981 cohort, the first cohort affected by the MTI reform
accounting for late enrollment, the gap between the Amharic and non-Amharic language
speakers disappears. This convergence between the two groups seems to arise form a drop
in the educational attainment of affected language groups following the MTI reform. This
provides some suggestive evidence that the reform may have eroded away some of the educational attainment gains non-Amharic language speakers would have achieved during this
period.
15
5.2
Identification
The research design in this study exploits both the cross-language and cross-cohort variations
in exposure to MTI and employs a difference-in-differences specification to find consistent
estimates for the impacts of the reform. This specification is necessary because, like many
African countries, educational attainment in Ethiopia has had an upward trend in recent
years. Consequently, it is difficult with only data on those treated by MTI to isolate the
impact of the program from other secular trends.
A simple illustration of this identification strategy is presented in Table 5. Focusing on
languages that were adopted in or before 1992, I separate my sample into two groups: the
treated non-Amharic language speakers and the control Amharic speakers. I compare mean
years of schooling for cohorts who had full exposure to the reform (they were between ages
2-7 in 1992 and 17-22 in the 2007 census) with those who had no exposure to the reform (they
were between ages 15-20 in 1992 and 30-35 in the 2007 census) for both language groups.
The results, which are presented in Panel A of Table 5, show that educational attainment
has increased during this period for both the Amharic and non-Amharic language speakers.
Younger cohorts who experienced their full primary school career after the reform have more
than a year of additional years of schooling compared to cohorts who completed primary
school prior to the reform. However my results show that this cross-cohort increase in
schooling was lower for the non-Amharic language speakers. This suggests that the language
policy reform might have led to a reduction in educational attainment of affected language
speakers.
The difference-in-differences estimation strategy assumes that in the absence of the reform, average outcome of the treated language groups would have changed in the same way
as the average outcome of the control language group. I provide some evidence in support
of this estimation strategy, by testing an implication of the identifying assumption. More
specifically, similar to Panel A of Table 5, I conduct comparisons in mean years of schooling
for cohorts between the ages of 17-22 and 30-35 in the non-Amharic and Amharic groups,
16
except using the 1994 census of Ethiopia. The results from this placebo exercise, which
are presented in Panel B of Table 5, though imprecisely estimated, are much smaller than
the estimates in Panel A. This provides strong evidence suggesting that the difference-indifferences estimate is in fact a causal impact of the language policy reform and not the effect
of a pre-reform differential trend between the Amharic and non-Amharic language groups.
5.3
Estimation
Based on the identification strategy described above, I estimate the effects of MTI using all
the variation in exposure to the new policy while accounting for cross-language differences
in adoption year and length of use in primary school. To this end, I employ a two-way
fixed-effect estimation strategy using the equation given by
Sijl = βo + β1 (Exposurej .M Tl ) + ul + vj + βx Xijl + εijl ,
(1)
where Sijl is a measure of schooling, for individual i in cohort j and language group l and
Exposurej is the fraction of primary grades studied under the reform for cohort j. M Tl is
a dummy which takes value 1 if the individual’s mother tongue language l is offered as a
medium of instruction, in the region where the individual resides, following the reform. It
takes value zero if the respondent’s mother tongue is Amharic and the respondent lives in
the Amhara region where Amharic has always been offered as a medium of instruction. ul
and vj are mother tongue language and cohort fixed effects. The coefficient of interest is β3 ,
which under the identifying assumptions gives us the causal effect of MTI on schooling. The
vector Xijl contains control variables including sex, religion, region and zone fixed effects.
In addition to the identification strategy in Equation 1, I employ a more general estimation strategy using an interaction term analysis. In order to do so, I estimate the equation
given by
17
Sijl = βo +
25
X
β1k (M Tl .dik ) + ul + vj + βx Xijl + εijl
(2)
k=2
where dik is a dummy that indicates whether individual i is of age k when the reform took
effect. All other variables are defined as in Equation 1. Each coefficient β1k can be interpreted
as an estimate of the impact of the reform on a given cohort k.
6
Results
6.1
Effects on Educational Outcomes
In Tables 6, I present my estimates for the effects of the reform on enrollment, years of
schooling and conditional years of schooling using the specification given in Equation 1.
In the second column of Table 6, Amharic language speakers, who were exposed to MTI
before and after the reform, are used as a control group, while in column 3, my control
group is composed of non-Amharic language speakers who were never exposed to MTI. My
estimates for β3 using Amharic language speakers as my control suggest that enrollment,
years of schooling, and conditional years of schooling declined due to the MTI policy. More
specifically, I find that enrollment declined by about 6 percentage points while years of
schooling and conditional years of schooling fell by more than 0.4 years due to full (eight
years) exposure to the MTI policy. These estimates, which are clustered at the zone level,
are statistically significant at the 1 percent level of significance.
Furthermore, my estimates for the effects of the reform on enrollment and years of schooling using languages that were never included in the MTI policy suggest similar declines in
educational attainment due to the reform. I find that enrollment declined by 5 percentage
points while years of schooling fell by 0.3 years. These estimates, which are statistically
significant at the 5 and 10 percent level respectively, are not statistically different from my
18
estimates in column 2. My estimate for the impact of the reform on conditional years of
schooling, though positive, is not statistically significant. Overall, the results in Table 6
provide strong evidence for the negative effect of the reform on schooling. Moreover, the
results in column 2 show that my estimates are not driven by the use of Amharic speakers
as a control group.
Next, I use Equation 2, to explore the differential impact of the reform by age groups
using an interaction term analysis. In order to estimate this equation, I limit my sample to
languages that were adopted in 1992, including the most populous languages of the country.
In this sample, because individuals aged 11 and older were past grade 1 in 1992, the effect of
the reform for them should be zero.17 On the other hand, cohorts aged 11 years or younger
at the time of the reform had full exposure to the policy and therefore we would expect to
observe the effects of the reform on their schooling outcomes.
In Figure 4 and Figure 5, I have plotted the β1k estimates for enrollment and years of
schooling respectively. Each dot on the solid line is the coefficient on the interaction between
a dummy for being a given age at the time of the reform and a dummy for the individual’s
language being included in the MTI policy. The 90 percent confidence intervals are plotted in
broken lines. As we would expect, the reform did not have any effect on cohorts who were not
exposed to the reform. My estimates fluctuate around zero until age 11 and start decreasing
at age 11. This pattern is particularly evident in my estimates for years of schooling, where
all the coefficients after age 8 are negative and statistically different from zero at the 15
percent level of significance.
A potential source for the negative effects of the reform on schooling might be a differential
trend in educational expenditure for the non-Amhara and Amhara regions. I investigate
the potency of this channel, using limited region level information on annual educational
expenditures for years 1993-2002 sourced from Ministry of Education annual reports. Using
this information, I calculate the change in expenditure for Oromia, SNNPR and Tigray
17
This accounts for late enrollment and I am using the average pre-reform enrollment age of 11.
19
regions relative to the Amhara region.18 The results from these calculations are summarized
in Figure 6, which plots differences in expenditures measured in millions of Birrs19 .
As we can see in the figure, expenditure in the Tigray region goes down relative to the
Amhara region. In Oromia and SNNPR regions on the other hand, we see that both expenditure on teachers’ training and overall expenditure on education have increased relative to
the Amhara region between 1993 and 2002. Therefore, the decline in educational attainment
following the reform is unlikely to be the side effect of disproportionate increases in educational expenditures in the Amhara region. Moreover, this result shows that any bias that
might arise due to regional differences in educational spending is working against finding
negative effects. Thus, my estimates can be interpreted as upper bounds to a negative and
significant effect of the Ethiopian MTI reform on educational outcomes.
However, these results only speak about the short-term effects of the policy. It may be
the case that the reasons for these significant negative effects of the reform are implementation problems specific to this early transition period. During my interviews with officials at
regional education bureaus, lack of trained teachers who are proficient in non-Amharic languages was the most cited obstacle to the implementation process. Unfortunately, I was not
able to get any data on teachers training or distribution, which would allow me to provide
corroborative evidence for these claims.
To over come this problem, I conducted a small survey of newspaper articles from the
early 1990s that discussed the implementation process of the MTI reform. I focused mainly
on Addis Zemen, which is the main newspaper in the country published by the federal
government.20 A number of articles reported that in order to mitigate the shortage of
teachers who are proficient non-Amharic languages, new teachers with no formal training
were recruited and trained for about 10 days before being assigned to teach in primary
18
These three regions are the most populous regions of the country and contain most of the languages that
were adopted into the MTI policy early on.
19
All values are measured in the Ethiopian currency Birr, which is deflated to its 1994 value using GDPdeflator data from the World Bank.
20
Press freedom is very limited in Ethiopia under the EPDRF government and there are almost no reliable
private news sources; therefore I focus on the main newspaper published by the government.
20
grades. At the same time, a large number of teachers who were trained to teach in Amharic
were out of jobs, as they did not speak regional languages. For instance, in Oromia region
alone, more than 6000 teachers were put on paid leave because they did not speak Oromigna.
In a country where trained teachers are scarce, such a loss would have significant negative
effects on schooling. In addition, multiple articles reported severe shortages of textbooks and
teaching materials in many regions that were implementing the MTI reform at the time.21
This qualitative evidence suggests that even if mother tongue education has a potential to
improve classroom communication and raise learning outcomes, poor implementation of MTI
policies can have dire consequences on educational attainment and my results attest to this
possibility.
6.2
Effects on Child Labor Outcomes
After establishing the negative effects of the reform on educational attainment, I examine
its effects on child labor outcomes using Equation 1.22 More specifically, I estimate the
effects of MTI on various labor market outcomes, including the probability of engaging in
any work, paid work outside the household and unpaid family work within the household.
I also investigate the effects of the policy on individuals’ likelihood of reporting being an
employer, self-employed or a private employee.
I present the results from these estimations in Table 8. As we can see in Panel A of Table
8, using the whole sample, I find no effect of MTI on the probability of engaging in any
type work. The reform had a positive and statistically significant effect on the probability of
engaging in paid work outside the home. I also find that the probability of being a private
employee increased due to the reform. In contrast, I find no effects on being self-employed
or an employer.
21
In the appendix of this paper, I summarize some of the articles that discussed the implementation process
of the language policy.
22
I provide additional evidence on the effects of the language policy reform on schooling outcomes using
the 2001 Child Labor Survey of Ethiopia. The results from these estimations, which are presented in Table
7, show that the negative estimates I find are not specific to the use of the 2007 census data. I find significant
reductions in enrollment and years of schooling due to the reform in this alternative sample.
21
However, these results are potentially conflating differential impacts of the policy on female and male children. In Panel B and C of Table 8, I present my estimates for the effects
of the reform on labor market outcomes of female and male respondents respectively. My
results show that, the probability of engaging in paid work increased for male children due
to the reform, while the effect on female children was very small and statistically insignificant. On the other hand, the likelihood of participating in unpaid family work rose for
female children, while male children experienced a slight reduction. These results suggest
that households that were affected by the reform responded to the new language policy by
increasing boys’ participation in the labor market outside the home and by increasing girls’
labor supply within the home. These results are not surprising given the fact that in many
developing countries women are often relegated to unpaid work within the household.
I also find some suggestive evidence that children affected by MTI had an increased
probability of engaging in work activities that might be dangerous to their health. Although
statistically insignificant, I find a slight increase in the probability of a child reporting being
physically harmed while working. The survey also asks parents if people who work in similar
jobs as the child usually wear protective gear. The probability of answering yes to this
question is higher for parents of children in affected language groups. The results presented
in Table 9 suggest that, children affected by the MTI policy are not only more likely to work,
their probability of engaging in potentially hazardous work is higher.
Next, I explore several channels that might link the negative effect of the reform on
schooling with its positive effect on child labor. In the 2001 survey, parents of children who
were not enrolled in school at the time of the interview were asked to report their reasons for
keeping their children from school. Parents also reported their preferences on their children’s
time allocation between school and work. Using the responses to these questions, I attempt
to see if the reform had changed the value household’s give on children’s work and schooling.
As we can see in Table 10, reasons such as absence of a school nearby, cost of schooling
and other problem at school (e.g. the child being scared of teachers) are commonly stated
22
reasons for children’s absence from school. However, I do not find any significant effect of
the MTI policy on the probability of giving one of these responses. On the other hand, I
find significant increases on the probability reporting sickness, work (inside or outside the
home) or parents negative attitude towards schooling as the main factors for the reduced
school attendance of affected children. These results suggest that the reform might have
reduced the value parents put on their children’s education leading to declines in schooling
and increases in child labor.
6.2.1
Robustness Checks
An important concern with the identification strategy of the paper is that the impacts of other
contemporaneous changes in the education system, such as the 1994 school fee elimination
initiative and the restructuring of primary and secondary school cycles, can potentially be
conflated with the effects of the language policy refrom. If these changes have differential
impacts on Amharic and non-Amharic language speakers, then my estimates for the effects
of MTI would be biased.
I provide some evidence against this concern by estimating the effects of the reform
separately for languages that adopted MTI, before 1994, in 1994 and after 1994. The results
from these estimations are presented in panels A and B of Table 11. With the exception of
languages adopted in 1995, I find negative effects for all years between 1992 and 1997. My
estimates for 1995, although positive in sign, are statistically significant at the 15 percent
level. These results provide strong evidence that my estimates are unlikely to be driven by
concurrent policy changes in the education sector.
Furthermore, my estimates for the effects of MTI are consistent estimates only under the
identifying assumption that in the absence of the reform, unobserved differences between the
Amharic and the non-Amharic language groups are the same over time. Using data from the
1994 census, I conduct a robustness check on this assumption by estimating the effects of a
placebo MTI reform on cohorts who attended primary school prior to the language policy
23
change. As long as the identification assumption is valid, I should not find any negative
effect of the policy on this sample. My estimates for the effects of this placebo reform on
enrollment, years of schooling and conditional years of schooling are presented in columns 2,
3 and 4 of Table 12. I find a positive and statistically significant effect on enrollment. On
the other hand, my estimates for the effects of the placebo reform on years of schooling and
conditional years of schooling are both statistically insignificant. Overall, these results do
not provide any evidence against the identification strategy of the study.
I conduct a second robustness check using non-Amharic languages in the Amhara region
that were included in the MTI policy in the mid 1990s. Using speakers of these languages,
which are Agew-Awingigna, Agew-Kamyrigna and Oromigna, as my treatment group, I test
whether or not the negative effects I am capturing are due to trends specific to the Amhara
region that are unrelated to the language policy reform. My results from these estimations
are presented in Table 13 and show that there are negative effects of the reform on affected
language groups within the Amhara region.
I conduct an additional robustness check using Oromigna speakers in the Amhara region.
Figure 7 shows zones in the Amhara region including the Oromia zone, a unique zone with
a population that predominantly speaks Oromigna. Unlike Agew-Awingigna and AgewKamyrigna, which are spoken only in the Amhara region, Oromigna is widely spoken in
other regions; therefore the Oromia zone in Amhara provides an interesting case to test
whether or not regional trends are driving my results. In order to do so, first, I estimate
Equation 1 using Oromigna speakers in the Amhara region as my treatment group and using
Amharic speakers in a neighboring zone in the Amhara region as my control group. Next I
switch my control group to a zone from the Oromia region. If my identification strategy is
valid, consistent with my main results, I should find a negative effect in the first estimation.
Moreover, I should not find any effect in the second estimation as Oromigna speakers in the
Amhara and Oromia regions are affected similarly by the reform.
My estimates from this exercise are presented in Table 14. When the control is in the
24
Amhara region, I find more than 0.6 years of decline in educational attainment due to the
reform, a result that is statistically significant at the 1 percent level of significance. When
the control is in the Oromia region on the other hand, I find a much smaller effect, which
is not statistically significant. This gives us some evidence supporting the validity of the
identification strategy.
I also provide some evidence showing that my estimates for the effects of MTI on child
labor outcomes are not driven by differences in labor market trends between the treatment
and control groups. In order to do so, I estimate the effect of the reform on labor market
outcomes of older, unaffected cohorts in the 2001 Child Labor Survey. The estimates, which
I present in Table 15, are small and almost always statistically insignificant. Therefore, it is
very unlikely that different labor market trends across regions can explain the positive effects
of the MTI reform on child labor outcomes. In general, these robustness checks emphasize
that the effects estimated in the main analysis are causal impacts of the language policy
reform and not products of concurrent policy changes or other secular trends.
7
Conclusion
The results from this paper show that Ethiopia’s mother tongue education policy had significant negative effects on enrollment, years of schooling and conditional years of schooling,
in rural areas of the country. Given the very low level of educational attainment in the
country, these negative impacts are substantial. In addition, I find significant increases in
children’s work within and outside the household. For male children, the reform increased
their participation in paid employment, while for female children, the reform led to increased
participation in unpaid family work. Furthermore, parents in affected groups had a higher
probability of reporting work as an important reason for keeping children out of school.
These results suggest that the reform reduced households’ valuation of schooling leading
to declines in educational attainment and increases in the incidence of child labor. I also
25
provide qualitative evidence which suggests that poor implementation of the policy without
sufficient training of teachers who are proficient in non-Amahric languages and inadequate
supply of pedagogical materials were significant obstacles that might explain the negative
effects of the policy during this transition period.
In general, the results from this paper, which capture the unintended consequences of
MTI policies in the short-run, provide important insights to policy makers in other African
countries. Most Sub-Saharan African countries share several key features with Ethiopia.
First, similar to Ethiopia, most of these countries are characterized by a remarkable ethnic
and linguistic diversity. Second, their education systems are plagued by a multitude of problems, including lack of sufficient school facilities, shortages of trained teachers and inadequate
supply of teaching materials. Given these similarities, any effort to introduce mother tongue
education in these countries is most likely to be faced with the same obstacles as in the case
of Ethiopia. My results highlight the need for extensive preparation before implementing
educational language policy reforms.
26
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29
Figure 1: Regions of Ethiopia
30
Figure 2: Mean years of Schooling by Language Groups
Figure 3: Mean years of Schooling by Language Groups
31
Figure 4: Effect on Enrollment by Age
Figure 5: Effect on Years of Schooling by Age
32
Figure 6: Differences in Educational Expenditure
33
Figure 7: Differences in Educational Expenditure
34
Table 1: Languages Used as Medium of Instruction by Region
Region
Language
Adoption Year
Grades as MOI
Grades as a Subject
Afar
Afarigna
2013
1 (Trial)
1-4
Amhara
Agew-Awinigigna
Agew-Kamyrigna
Oromigna
1996
1995
1994
1-6
1-8
1-8
1-12
1-12
1-12
BenishangulGumuz
Bertagna
Gumuzigna
Shinashigna
2008
2008
2008
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-6
1-6
1-6
Dire Dawa
Oromigna
Somaligna
1992
1997
1-6
1-6
1-12
1-6
Gambela
Anyiwakgna
Nuwerigna
Mejengerigna
Komigna
UPO
1994
1995
1997
2011
2011
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-10
1-10
1-10
1-4
1-4
Harari
Hareriegna
Oromigna
1994
1995
1-6
1-6
1-12
1-12
Oromia
Oromigna
1992
1-8
1-12
SNNPR
Gamogna
Goffigna
Sidamigna
Welaitagna
Dawurogna
Hadiyigna
Kembatigna
Gedeogna
Siltigna
Kaffagna
Qebenigna
Koyrigna (Korete)
Kontigna
Shekicho
Marekogna
Basketigna
Me’enigna
Yemsagna
Shekogna
Benchigna
Dizigna
Oyidigna
Zeysegna
Timbarogna
1992
1992
1992
1992
1993
1993
1993
1994
1995
1997
1997
1999
2001
2007
2009
2009
2010
2010
2011
2011
2011
2012
2012
—
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
1-4
—
1-4
—
1-3
1-3
1-3 (Trial)
1-4 (Trial)
1-3 (Trial)
1-3 (Trial)
1-3 (Trial)
1 (Trial)
1(Trial)
Preparation
1-10
1-10
1-12
1-12
1-11
1-12
1-8
1-10
1-12
1-12
1-4
1-4
1-8
1-6
1-4
1-3
1-3 (Trial)
1-4 (Trial)
1-3 (Trial)
1-3 (Trial)
1-3 (Trial)
1 (Trial)
1 (Trial)
Preparation
Somali
Somaligna
Tigray
Tigrigna
1991
1-8
1-12
Information on adoption years and grades was directly collected from Regional Education Bureaus. Names of languages
are based on the 2007 census.
35
Table 2: Summary Statistics by Language Group
A) Using the 2007 Census
Amharic
(Always MOI)
Non-Amharic
(MOI After Reform)
Non-Amharic
(Never MOI)
Age
27.033
(7.052)
27.076
(7.076)
27.897
(7.244)
Female
0.520
(0.500)
0.521
(0.500)
0.554
(0.497)
Enrollment
0.234
(0.423)
0.279
(0.448)
0.258
(0.437)
Years of Schooling
1.202
(2.627)
1.392
(2.694)
1.254
(2.586)
Literacy
0.706
(0.456)
0.647
(0.478)
0.709
(0.454)
Ever Married
0.775
(0.418)
0.745
(0.436)
0.749
(0.434)
N
90,679
226,612
16,196
B) Using the 2001 Child Labor Survey
Age
13.404
(5.932)
13.722
(6.092)
13.463
(6.103)
Female
0.502
(0.500)
0.504
(0.500)
0.499
(0.500)
Enrollment
0.167
(0.373)
0.199
(0.400)
0.151
(0.358)
Years of Schooling
0.534
(1.474)
0.712
(1.711)
0.534
(1.555)
Literacy
0.189
(0.392)
0.214
(0.410)
0.157
(0.364)
Ever Married
(Ages 10 and above)
0.417
(0.493)
0.270
(0.444)
0.250
(0.433)
Any Work
0.657
(0.475)
0.632
(0.482)
0.669
(0.471)
Paid Work
0.042
(0.201)
0.0168
(0.129)
0.012
(0.111)
Unpaid Family Work
0.562
(0.496)
0.531
(0.499)
0.581
(0.494)
8,219
32,433
4,107
N
Sources: The 2007 Ethiopian census and the 2001 Child Labor Survey. Sample includes individuals
born between 1967 and 1990 in the census and born between 1976 and 1996 in Child Labor Survey.
Only individuals residing in rural areas are included.
36
Table 3: Exposure to Mother Tongue Education by Language Group
1987
20
5
1986
21
6
1985
22
7
1984
23
8
1983
24
9
1983
25
10
1982
26
11
1980
27
12
1979
28
13
1978
29
14
1977
30
15
≤ 1976
≥ 31
≥ 16
Potential grade in 1994
.
.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
≥ 10
Non-Amharic group
Amharic group
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
1
1
0.291
1
0.068
1
0.011
1
0.001
1
0
1
Year of Birth
Age in 2007
Age in 1992
Potential Exposure
0
1
0
1
Expected Exposure
Non-Amharic group
Amharic group
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Adoption year is assumed to be 1992 and the referenced non-Amharic language is used as medium of instruction for
8 years of primary school. Information on pre reform enrollment age, grade repetition and dropout rate are sourced
from the 1988 Education Statistics Annual Abstracts published by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education.
Table 4: Grade Repetition and Progression Rate for the 1987/88 Academic Year
Grade
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Repetition Rate
0.187
0.095
0.069
0.064
0.051
0.103
0.081
0.171
Progression Rate
0.522
0.873
0.872
0.870
0.901
0.822
0.801
0.735
37
Table 5: Mean Years of Schooling
Non-Amharic Speakers
Amharic Speakers
Difference
2.587
(0.012)
1.545
(0.013)
2.956
(0.019)
1.266
(0.020)
-0.369
(0.022)
0.279
(0.023)
1.043
(0.018)
1.690
(0.029)
-0.648
(0.033)
1.544
(0.012)
0.960
(0.013)
1.280
(0.017)
0.684
(0.016)
0.264
(0.021)
0.276
(0.021)
0.583
(0.018)
0.596
(0.025)
-0.013
(0.031)
Panel A: Experiment of Interest
17-22 years old in 2007
30-35 years old in 2007
Difference
Panel B: Control Experiment
17-22 years old in 1994
30-35 years old in 1994
Difference
Source: The 1994 and 2007 Ethiopian censuses. Sample
includes individuals born between 1959 and 1977 in the 1994
census and 1972 and 1995 in the 2007 residing in rural areas.
Only languages adopted in or before 1992 are used.
38
Table 6: Effects of MTI on Educational Attainment
Control Language
Groups
Always MTI
( Amharic) Speakers
Never MTI
Language Speakers
Enrollment
Exposure×MT
Female
R2
Mean
N
-0.060****
(0.007)
-0.226****
(0.013)
0.161
0.266
275,907
-0.054***
(0.025)
-0.259****
(0.011)
0.178
0.276
205,800
Years of Schooling
Exposure×MT
Female
R2
Mean
N
-0.452****
(0.050)
-1.279****
(0.099)
0.134
1.338
275,907
-0.304**
(0.168)
-1.512****
(0.082)
0.159
1.412
205,800
Conditional Years of Schooling
Exposure×MT
R2
Female
Mean
N
-0.424****
(0.123)
0.043
-0.612****
(0.118)
5.032
79,363
Source: The 2007 Ethiopian census. Sample includes individuals born between
1967 and 1990 residing in rural areas. Only languages adopted in or before 1997
are used. Standard errors are clustered at zone level. Language, cohort, region
and zone fixed effects are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
39
-0.107
(0.220)
0.059
-0.910****
(0.051)
.5.113
63,697
Table 7: Effects of MTI on Educational Attainment using the 2001 Child Labor
Survey
Enrollment
Years of
Schooling
Conditional
Years of Schooling
Exposure×MT
-0.085****
(0.020)
-0.459****
(0.140)
-0.140
(0.193)
Female
-0.170****
(0.016)
-0.783****
(0.080)
-0.206***
(0.082)
0.153
0.428
43,364
0.147
2.711
43,364
0.270
2.711
8,357
R2
Mean
N
Source: The 2001 Child Labor Survey. Sample includes individuals
born between 1961 and 1996 residing in rural areas. Standard errors
are clustered at zone level. Language, cohort, region and zone fixed
effects are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
40
Table 8: Effects of Mother Tongue Education on Children’s Work Inside and
Outside the Home
Any Work
Paid Work
Employer
SelfEmployed
Unpaid
Work Family
Private
Employee
Effects on the Aggregate Sample
Exposure×MT
0.008
(0.025)
0.0139***
(0.007)
0.001
(0.002)
-0.002
(0.015)
-0.001
(0.023)
0.015***
(0.006)
Mean
0.400
0.022
0.000
0.049
0.537
0.019
2
0.236
0.298
0.012
0.077
0.230
0.254
N
39,053
39,053
39,053
39,053
39,053
39,053
R
Effects on Female Respondents
Exposure×MT
0.042*
(0.028)
0.005
(0.00)
0.001
(0.002)
-0.002
(0.017)
0.041*
(0.025)
0.005
(0.005)
Mean
0.541
0.011
0.000
0.057
0.472
0.008
2
0.165
0.122
0.022
0.234
0.145
0.048
N
19,680
19,680
19,680
19,680
19,680
19,680
R
Effects on Male Respondents
Exposure×MT
-0.035
(0.029)
0.023**
(0.013)
0.001
(0.004)
-0.007
(0.021)
-0.048**
(0.026)
0.024***
(0.012)
Mean
0.736
0.033
0.001
0.097
0.604
0.031
2
0.257
0.393
0.013
0.700
0.319
0.373
N
19,373
19,373
19,373
19,373
19,373
19,373
R
Source: The 2001 Ethiopian Child Survey. Sample includes individuals born between 1984 and
1996 residing in rural areas. Only languages adopted in or before 1997 are used in the treatment
group. Standard errors are clustered at zone level. Language, cohort, region and zone fixed effects
are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
41
Table 9: Hazardous Nature of Work
Ever Harmed
at Work
Any Perceived
Danger Due to Work
Job Required
Protective Gear
0.073
(0.056)
0.0355
(0.041)
0.102***
(0.047)
-0.018****
(0.005)
-0.073****
(0.009)
-0.060****
(0.013)
Mean
0.065
0.147
0.062
2
0.034
0.068
0.108
N
26,512
26,512
26,512
Exposure×MT
Female
R
Source: The 2001 Ethiopian Child Survey. Sample includes individuals born between 1984 and
1996 residing in rural areas. Only languages adopted in or before 1997 are used in the treatment
group. Standard errors are clustered at zone level. Language, cohort, region and zone fixed effects
are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
Table 10: Reasons for not Attending Schools
No School
Nearby
Too
Costly
Problems at
School
Sickness
To Work at
Home
To Work Outside
the Home
Parents
Don’t Want
Exposure×MT
0.073
(0.097)
0.030
(0.053)
0.015
(0.028)
0.073****
(0.027)
-0.064
(0.079)
0.083***
(0.035)
0.072***
(0.022)
Female
0.009
(0.007)
0.010**
(0.006)
-0.008***
(0.003)
-0.006
(0.004)
0.083****
(0.008)
-0.079****
(0.010)
-0.003
(0.006)
Mean
0.169
0.077
0.332
0.038
0.178
0.101
0.061
R2
0.097
0.070
0.028
0.031
0.116
0.123
0.0345
N
19,383
19,383
19,383
19,383
19,383
19,383
19,383
Source: The 2001 Ethiopian Child Survey. Sample includes individuals born between 1984 and
1996 residing in rural areas. Only languages adopted in or before 1997 are used in the treatment
group. Standard errors are clustered at zone level. Language, cohort, region and zone fixed effects
are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., * p < 0.15.
42
Table 11: Effects of Mother Tongue Education by Year of Adoption
1992
1993
1994
Dependent Variable
1995
1996
1997
Enrollment
Exposure×MT
-0.044****
(0.007)
0.007
(0.008)
-0.147****
(0.033)
0.088*
(0.057)
-0.078**
(0.032)
-0.059***
(0.024)
Female
-0.235****
(0.016)
-0.172****
(0.008)
-0.168****
(0.013)
-0.165****
(0.010)
-0.156***
(0.009)
-0.167****
(0.011)
Mean
0.291
0.264
0.239
0.238
0.228
0.141
2
0.162
0.155
0.127
0.129
0.124
0.126
R
Dependent Variable
Years of Schooling
Exposure×MT
-0.280***
(0.052)
-0.200*
(0.123)
-0.870***
(0.246)
0.225
(0.186)
-0.453**
(0.240)
-0.233
(0.173)
Female
-1.326***
(0.120)
-0.926***
(0.125)
-0.848***
(0.111)
-0.815***
(0.087)
-0.773***
(0.009)
-0.822****
(0.094)
Mean
1.484
1.389
1.228
1.209
1.174
1.219
2
0.133
0.122
0.093
0.094
0.124
0.092
N
246,760
103,410
95,025
95,730
96,967
95743
5
3
3
2
3
4
R
No. Languages
Source: The 2007 Ethiopian census. Sample includes individuals born between
1967 and 1990 residing in rural areas. Only languages adopted in or before 1997
are used. Standard errors are clustered at zone level. Language, cohort, region
and zone fixed effects are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
43
Table 12: Effects of Mother Tongue Education on Older Cohorts
Exposure×MT
Female
R2
N
Enrollment
Years of
Schooling
Conditional Years
of Schooling
0.030***
(0.014)
0.122
(0.088)
-0.112
(0.230)
-0.168****
(0.022)
-1.004 ****
(0.136)
-0.627
(0.080)
0.148
198,922
0.131
198,922
0.075
23,596
Source: The 1994 Ethiopian census. Sample includes individuals
born between 1954 and 1976 residing in rural areas. Only languages
adopted in or before 1997 are used. Standard errors are clustered
at zone level. Language, cohort, region and zone fixed effects are
included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
Table 13: Effects of Mother Tongue Education on Non-Amharic Languages in
Amhara Region
Enrollment
Years of
Schooling
Conditional Years
of Schooling
Exposure×MT
-0.078***
(0.032)
-0.453
(0.240)
-0.155
(0.291)
Female
-0.156****
(0.009)
0.773****
(0.087)
0.152
(0.236)
0.124
96,967
0.092
96,967
0.041
22,139
R2
N
Source: The 2007 Ethiopian census. Sample includes individuals
born between 1954 and 1976 residing in rural areas. Only languages
adopted in or before 1997 are used. Standard errors are clustered
at zone level. Language, cohort, region and zone fixed effects are
included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
44
Table 14: Effects of Mother Tongue Education in Oromia Zone, Amhara Region
Enrollment
Exposure×MT
Female
R2
N
Years of Schooling
Control
in Amhara
Control
in Oromia
Control
in Amhara
Control
in Oromia
-0.100****
(0.018)
0.010
(0.017)
-0.699****
(0.109)
-0.123
(0.089)
-0.168
(0.006)
0.130
15,144
-0.236****
(0.010)
0.143
7,351
-0.820****
(0.038)
0.100
15,144
-1.212****
(0.050)
0.119
7,351
Source: The 2007 Ethiopian census. Sample includes individuals born
between 1967 and 1990 residing in rural areas. Language, cohort,
region and zone fixed effects are included.
**** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.05, ** p < 0.10., *p < 0.15
45
Table 15: Robustness Check: Effects of Mother Tongue Education on Labor
Market Outcomes of Unaffected Older Cohorts
Any Work
Paid Work
Employer
SelfEmployed
Unpaid
Work Family
Private
Employee
Effects on the Aggregate Sample
Exposure×MT
-0.005
(0.017)
-0.007
(0.006)
-0.004
(0.004)
0.022**
(0.012)
-0.021
(0.015)
0.002
(0.002)
Mean
0.726
0.171
0.009
0.457
0.288
0.007
2
0.769
0.093
0.004
0.463
0.428
0.014
N
17,475
17,475
17,475
17,475
17,475
17,475
R
Effects on Female Respondents
Exposure×MT
-0.014
(0.028)
-0.006
(0.005)
-0.001
(0.005)
0.016
(0.017)
-0.026
(0.023)
-0.007
(0.004)
Mean
0.634
0.089
0.004
0.457
0.243
0.154
2
0.116
0.054
0.024
0.301
0.296
0.023
N
9,032
9,032
9,032
9,032
9,032
9,032
0.015
(0.012)
-0.010
(0.012)
-0.003
(0.007)
-0.004
(0.008)
Mean
0.914
0.088
0.016
0.636
0.016
0.237
R2
0.070
0.116
0.057
0.220
0.438
0.135
N
8,443
8,443
8,443
8,443
8,443
8,443
R
Exposure×MT
Effects on Male Respondents
-0.008
0.026*
(0.007)
(0.017)
Source: The 2001 Ethiopian Child Survey. Sample includes individuals born between 1956 and 1983
residing in rural areas. Only languages adopted in or before 1997 are included in the treatment
group. Standard errors are clustered at zone level.
*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10.
46
Appendix
Summary of Newspaper Articles Translated from Amharic
• Benchigna in SNNP region
– 56 teachers who speak Benchigna were trained for 10 days in order to start mother
tongue instruction in the language in the SNNP region.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, October 7)
• Oromingna in Amhara region
– In order to start mother tongue instruction in the Oromia zone of the Amhara
region in 1994, 110 high school graduates and 56 education officers were trained
for 10 days.
– The newly recruited teachers will be assigned to teach primary grades temporarily
for the referenced year and will be sent back to teaching colleges next year.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, October 7)
• Kaffinono (Kaffagna) in SNNP region
– About 1000 people from the Kafficho ethnic groups held a rally supporting plans
to include Kaffinono in primary school education.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, October 7)
• Somaligna, Dire Dawa
– The plan to implement mother tongue education in Somaligna in Dire Dawa region
was delayed due to lack of teaching materials and trained teachers.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, October 14)
• Kaffinono, Goffigna, Dawurogna, SNNP region
– Kaffinono ,Goffigna and Dawurogna will be taught as a subject in grades 1-4
starting in November, 1994.
– The plan to use these languages as a medium of instruction starting this year was
delayed due to in sufficient preparation.
– Efforts to implement mother tongue education were complicated, as the current
distribution of teachers does not follow language needs. Regional education bureaus are planning to transfer teachers to areas where their language is spoken.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, October 25)
• Oromigna, Amhara region
– Lack of text books in Oromigna has hampered mother tongue instruction in the
language.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, November 1)
47
• Oromigna, Oromia region
– In Eastern Showa zone, primary schools are struggling because of shortage of
teachers who can teach in Oromigna.
– There are only 215 teachers who can teach in Oromigna, however, in order to
provide quality education in the language 120 additional teachers are needed.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, November 1)
• Oromigna, Harari region
– The Oromo community in the Harari region is happy about the use of Oromigna
as a medium of instruction in primary school.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, November 9)
• Gedeogna, SNNP region
– The Gedeo community held a rally in support of plans to use Gedeogna as a
working language in the area.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, November 16)
• Oromigna, Oromia region
– Community meeting in Assela town was held in support of the use of Oromigna
as a medium of instruction in primary school.
– Participants requested that the mother tongue policy should be extended to secondary school as well.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, December 9)
• Dawro and Wolaita in SNNP region
– Primary school teachers from the Dawro and Wolaita ethnic group were given a 3
day training on the new written forms of the languages using latin letters as well
as the development of curricula in the languages.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1994, December 9)
• Agew-Kamyrigna, Amhara region
– Mother tongue instruction in Agew-Kamyirigna will start this year (i.e 1994).
– Newly recruited teachers have been trained for 10 days.
– Additional 37 recruits who have 8 to 12 years of education are under going a
similar training.
∗ Addis Zemen, (1995, September 13)
• Oromigna, Oromia region
– 6000 teachers are on paid leave in Oromia because they do not speak the regional
language
∗ Addis Zemen, (1995, October 5)
48

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