For the well-being of today's families and for future generations, how important is investment in education and other forms of human capital? This report analyzes the potential for investments in education--by individual households, by government, and by donor agencies--to reduce poverty in postwar Mozambique. It provides an assessment of the existing stock of human capital and examines the association between human capital and both monetary and nonmonetary dimensions of household welfare. It also explores the factors that influence the decision to send children to school, and how long children remain in school.The authors focus on human capital because of its importance in increasing labor productivity in poor countries, its contribution to poverty reduction as both a substitute for and complement to physical capital, and the role of education in determining poverty levels. Although the analysis was originally commissioned by the Government of Mozambique, in many respects the methods and findings are also applicable in other low-income countries.

Sudhanshu Handa is a human resource economist in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously he was a research fellow at IFPRI and taught at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo from 1997 to 1999. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Toronto, and his research currently focuses on household economic and demographic behavior in developing countries.

Kenneth R. Simler, a research fellow in IFPRI's Food Consumption and Nutrition Division since 1999, has a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University. From 1998 to 2000, he was based in the Mozambique Ministry of Planning and Finance. His current research interests include poverty measurement and public policies to reduce poverty and undernutrition, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sarah Harrower was a senior research assistant in the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division at IFPRI when this report was written. She has a master's degree in development economics from Dalhousie University and is presently continuing her graduate studies in economics at the University of British Columbia.

• Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, Foreword, Acknowledgements, and Summary
  (PDF 59K)
  
  
• Chapter 1: Introduction
  (PDF 25K)
  
  
• Chapter 2: Background and Country Setting of Mozambique
  (PDF 34K)
  
  
• Chapter 3: Basic Schooling Indicators
  (PDF 153K)
  
  
• Chapter 4: Theoretical Framework and Choice of Variables
  (PDF 60K)
  
  
• Chapter 5: Adult Education and Children's Health
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• Chapter 6: Household Education and Investment in Children's Schooling
  (PDF 173K)
  
  
• Chapter 7: Policy Simulations
  (PDF 92K)
  
  
• Chapter 8: Conclusions and Policy Implications
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• Appendix A: Supplementary Tables
  (PDF 33K)
  
  
• Appendix B: Supplementary Figures
  (PDF 241K)
  
  
• References
  (PDF 35K)