Gender Differences in the Retention of Literacy and Numeracy in Malawi: A Longitudinal Analysis

While there is an increasing literature on the determinants of learning, the extent to which young people retain acquired skills upon school-leaving remains largely unknown. Using unique longitudinal data from a sample of Malawian adolescents who were attending school when first interviewed in 2007 and were re-interviewed yearly until 2011, this paper investigate gender differences in the retention of basic literacy and numeracy. Preliminary results show that while a significantly higher proportion of females than of males were able to read two sentences in Chichewa and in English at baseline, for numeracy there were no gender differences. Examining the trends in literacy and numeracy over time, although females performed significantly better than males in both languages at baseline, this difference disappeared and males significantly outperformed females in the most recent rounds. Males and females performed equally in the numeracy assessment at baseline, but by 2011 males’ also surpassed females. Preliminary results from life events analysis suggest that earlier school leaving by females and higher grade attainment by males partially explain these trends, but a gender effect remains in the retention of English literacy even after controlling for these variables.