The demand for education for orphans in Zimbabwe

We examine the effect of orphan status on school enrolment in Zimbabwe, a country strongly impacted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic with a rapidly growing population of orphans. Using data from 2003, after controlling for other determinants of enrolment we find that orphans are less likely to attend school than non-orphans. The result is robust to our correction for selection bias. Two additional results have implications for targeting: we find that the effect of being an orphan is especially large for older children and that, after controlling for previous education, the effect of being an orphan on school enrolment is sharply diminished.