Analyzing the Implementation of the Action Plan for the Reduction of

Absolute Poverty (PARPA II) by the Mozambican Government:

Considering the Education Indicators for female students at the
Elementary School Level (Ensino Primario do Primeiro Grau or EP1)
versus PARPA II Policy Prescriptions for increased Female
Productivity

An investigation into the relationships between elementary school

attendance by girls and PARPA II Policy Prescriptions

A research proposal by

Ricardo A. Contreras

11 December, 2009
Introduction

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of poverty and gender-based

inequalities, yet it is reported to have had an average annual rate of economic growth of 8% between

1996 and 2006.i Still, the country ranks at the bottom in terms of inequalities and poverty: the 2005

United Nations Human Development Index reported Mozambique as ranking 168 of 177 and 133 out

of 140 countries on the Gender-related Development Indexii. The majority of the population still suffer

extreme poverty, for example, the country’s 2008 GDP per capita (US$) was only 370; its external debt

(% of GDP) was 36.8 (nominal debt to GDP ratio) or over one third of its total GDP while its poverty

incidence was 54 %. All these factors interact negatively on a population estimated at 21.3 million as

of July 2008. iii

The country faces some serious barriers to human and economic development including

HIV/AIDS, pronounced gender inequality, vulnerability to natural disasters (drought and flooding),

income disparities between urban and rural areas, and the lack of human capital in critical levels and

sectors of government. Even though Mozambique is endowed with unexploited natural resources that

could support the development of large-scale agriculture, forestry and fishing, energy, and tourism,iv it

is struggling to improve the living conditions for the majority of its population after a protracted war

that stared shortly after its independence from Portugal in 1975 and which only ended in 1992.

Given the extreme poverty under which Mozambique’s population live, the International

Monetary Fund (IMF) is assisting the country through a poverty reduction and economic growth

strategy since the late 1990’s.v The IMF has made poverty reduction policies the central and cohesive

element of its lending to low-income countries. The main policy is referred to as the Action Plan for

the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (in this case, PARPA because of its acronym in Portuguese). For

example, Mozambique’s government’s PARPA for 2006-09 (PARPA II) calls for a reduction about 17

% in the incidence rate of poverty over a 6 year period - the goal is to push extreme poverty down from
54 percent in 2003 to 45 percent in 2009.

More specifically, Mozambique continues to suffer a very skewed gender inequality situation

where girls are not only discouraged to go to school but are expected to contribute with manual labor in

subsistence farming, in spite of the government’s efforts to increase the number of teachers and

elementary schools in the country.vi It is in this context, therefore, that this proposal will outline a

potential way of analyzing the policy prescription of the IMF’s strategy for poverty reduction in

Mozambique (PARPA) with respect to the impact it may have on households’ decision-making that

influences the decision whether to send a girl of EP1 age (Ensino Primario do Primeiro Grau or EP1) to

school or not.

Statement of the problem

Access to education is considered a necessary condition for development – in fact, illiteracy

and/or lack of access to education correlate with poor households around the world.vii In addition,

elementary education should be seen as a right for all children, including girls. In Mozambique, the end

of its civil war brought a certain degree of stability, including the introduction of a primary education in

1992. This resulted in increased elementary school enrollments but with low levels in improvements in

quality – even as of 2006, the enrollment of girls was lower (67%) than that of boys (71%). viii The

current strategy to reduce extreme poverty in developing countries such as Mozambique follows a set

of policy prescriptions by the World Bank and the IMF that combine education with sound macro-

economic policies aimed at poverty reduction. Education, in this context, is considered a key factor in

promoting social well-being in poverty reduction because it can have a positive impact on national

productivity and human capital accumulation and, therefore, help change the lives of millions and a

country’s competitive advantage in a globalized economy.ix Educating a country’s population - and in

the case of Mozambique this means opening up opportunities for children to be enrolled and stay in

school - is part of a broader set of policies prescribed by these international financing institutions to
invest public spending on the broad-based provision of key pro-growth services like primary education,

primary health care and infrastructure investment.x

The Mozambican government’s PARPA II document’s priorities include human capital

development through education and health, improved governance, development of basic infrastructures

and agriculture, rural development, and better macroeconomic and financial management. PARPA's

long-term objectives are as follow:

(i) a balanced economic and social development

(ii) reduction of absolute poverty
(iii) consolidation of the peace, national unity, and democracy
(iv) widespread application of the rules of justice
(v) improvements in education and health
(vi) encouragement of work, honesty, zeal, and enthusiasm
(vii) the guarantee of individual freedoms and social harmony
(viii) the imposition of laws against criminal acts; the guarantee of sovereignty
(ix) the guarantee of sovereignty and the strengthening of international cooperation.

The analysis of poverty and social impacts began to be applied to macroeconomic and structural

policy measures by the World Bank at the beginning of the new millenium.xi In the second half of

2000, in fact, the IMF and World Bank agreed to consider the poverty and social impact of major

reforms in their lending programs to poor countries. As a result, the government of Mozambique has

been engaging in an on-going strategy to combat absolute poverty in line with World Bank policies. In

the case of Mozambique, its government prepared its Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute

Poverty (PARPA) for the period 2001-2005 and then for the period 2006-2009. The PARPA 2006-2009

outlines a strategic vision for reducing poverty in the country, including main objectives and the key

actions to be pursued and which will serve as a blue-print to the state in preparing yearly budgets,

programs and policies. The PARPA 2001-2005 was also Mozambique’s first Poverty Reduction

Strategy Paper (PRSP), while the PARPA 2006-2009 prioritizes a more targeted set of policy

prescriptions that seeks greater integration of the national economy, increasing productivity via

“district-based development” and an improvement of the country’s financial system and its internal

revenue collection system. In short, PARPA II’s policy prescriptions seem to emphasize the creation of
an environment that favors economic growth by encouraging small and medium companies “to flourish

in the formal sector” and other business-oriented policies to support trade. PARPA II seems to rest on

five “pillars” over which all policy prescriptions rest:

(i) Macroeconomics and Poverty

(ii) Governance
(iii) Economic Development
(iv) Human Capital
(v) Cross-sectional topics

Of these five pillars, the one that concerns this author is human capital. Under PARPA II, human

capital is viewed as a “continuity to the plans for developing work-related

technical and scientific skills, good health and hygiene, and access to basic resources—

especially food and water. “ Public health issues are acknowledged as affecting the country’ human

development potential -- incidence reduction of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria

and tuberculosis are targeted for reduction levels. Of special note, however, is that the PARPA II

document does not directly mention education (nor education for women) under the pillar of Human

Capital, but instead, declares that “a special part of the resources in the state budget will be used to

finance classic social services that cover a huge proportion of the population, including the poorest.”

There are several mechanisms that make it possible to monitor and assess PARPA II’

prescriptions over the medium and long term as far as measuring the impact of policy prescriptions.

For example, the government of Mozambique conducted a national household survey to assess key

development indicators in 2007.xii Survey results that year showed that the net enrolment rate among

children in 1st Grade education reached a country-wide average of 95.5%; this meant a significant

increase occurred when compared to 2003 (69,4%). However, the enrollment in 1st Grade was higher

for boys (97.1%) than it was for girls (93.1%).

Gender differences between men and women show that adult literacy is a significant and ever-

present problem. Although the adult literacy rate in Mozambique grew from 46.4% in 2003 to 48.1%
in 2005, there is a significant difference among adult literacy rates between men’s and women’s. In

2007, it was estimated that adult females had a 33.3% while men’s rate was 66.7% - a 100 %

difference.

Mozambique is a country with deep-rooted gender differences so that this vast difference in the

literacy rate of both men and women is but a reminder of the long-term impact that poverty brings upon

members of its society. Women are primarily involved in subsistence agriculture and are expected to

contribute with their manual labor from an early age to the household. Poverty is prevalent in the

entire country but parents in rural communities struggle more to cope with the costs of sending their

children to school.xiii The cost of sending children to school must compete against the need for

surviving – including the fact that young children, especially girls, must begin working early on in their

lives. Therefore, the opportunity cost of sending children to primary school carries a high risk of being

perceived as having a very low return when compared to working on the family plot instead.

Research Questions

This study is going to be guided by the following research questions:

1. Is there an inverse relationship between gross rate of girls’school attendance at elementary

school grades 1-5 (EP1) and PARPA II’s emphasis on spending state resources on increasing
economic productivity?
2. What qualitative combinations of inputs are associated with female students who successfully
stay in and complete EP1 school in female headed rural households?
3. What qualitative combinations of inputs are associated with female students who successfully
stay in and complete EP1 school in female headed urban households?
4. Is there a PARPA II bias in directing state resources toward spending on farming technologies
over basic education expenditures?
5. Do girls from rural households have the same rate of EP1 level school enrolment as girls from
urban households?
6. Is there a relationship between improved infrastructure (PARPA II recommendation for
increased productivity among women) in rural areas (i.e., electricity, availability of potable
water) and EP1 school aged girls not staying in school?
7. Is there a relationship between improved farming technologies (PARPA II recommendation for
increased productivity among women) in rural areas (i.e., electricity, availability of potable
water) and EP1 school aged girls staying in school?
8. What qualitative combinations of inputs are associated with the decision to send a girl to school
by a female-headed rural household?
9. What qualitative combinations of inputs are associated with the decision to send a girl to school
 by a female-headed urban household?

To answer these questions the study will take both a quantitative and a qualitative approach to

address the problem, including the analysis of Mozambique’s Household Survey data (IAF),

supplemented by the most current survey data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the

2007 population census as well as a qualitative survey of selected households in both Maputo province

and Maputo city.

Limitations of the study

This study is limited because of data availability and sample inclusion, which may affect the

generalizability of the results. In particular, the qualitative survey inputs may limit the study and its

analysis because of limited information that can be gathered from respondents due to their own

household pressure to work. These and other confounding circumstances may limit this author’s

understanding of the results but these will be attempted at being controlled by the research design.

Design of the study

A complex two-stage sampling design will be used to help increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Thus, it is proposed that extracting a sample of districts and/or municipalities in Maputo province be

done in the first- stage, while in the second stage the actual sample of households will be extracted out

of the first-stage units. Districts and municipalities will be stratified according to their populations in

the first stage to ensure that the sample will include small and rural towns as well as large cities, while

in the second stage area sampling will be applied. Next, each sampled district/municipality will be

subdivided into blocks on a map through geographical coordinates; blocks are extracted through simple

random sampling and selected households in randomly selected blocks will be surveyed.

The households to be included in the qualitative arm of the study will be categorized into four

groups, depicting location in rural or urban areas and female head of household or male head of
household status, after conducting a random selection of districts and/or municipalities in the first stage

of selection. Table 1 below shows how the schools will be categorized.

The Sample

The districts and municipalities of Maputo Province include:

Boane District
Magude District
Manhiça District
Marracuene District
Moamba District
Namaacha District
Matutuine District
Manhiça Municipality
Matola Municipality

Table1: Sampling frame for Households (Qualitative Survey)

First Stage

Boane District
Magude District
Sampling frame
Manhiça District
Marracuene District Randomly select 5 districts
and/or municipalities
Moamba District
Namaacha District
Matutuine District
Manhiça Municipality
Matola Municipality
Maputo City Maputo City

Second Stage

Rural(300 households) Female head of household

 Male head of household
Sampling frame Urban (100 households) Female head of household
Male head of household

Conclusions

In terms of overall poverty, Mozambique’s 2002/2003 nationwide household survey revealed

that poverty declined from 69.4 percent in 1996/7 to 54.1 percent in 2002/3.xiv However, Mozambique

heavily depends on foreign aid and this achievement hides significant regional variations as more than

half of the population still lives in absolute poverty. It is estimated that income inequality has increased

– the Gini coefficient dropped from 0.40 in 1997 to 0.42 in 2003.xv The poverty profile also showed

that 62.5 per cent of families headed by women are poorer compared with 51.9 per cent headed by

men, according to the official Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE 2004).xvi

Analyses of the incidence of poverty according to head of household sex were carried out by

the Mozambican government, including estimates of the distribution of the labor force by sex and

income level.xvii These estimates indicated that female-headed households by women tend to have a

higher incidence of poverty - 62.5 percent compared with 51.9 percent for male-headed households.

The determinants of poverty revealed that the higher rates of poverty among female-headed households

were related to low educational levels among women, widowhood status and incomes deemed very low

to meet their family needs.

One of PARPA II’s argument is that the link between gender and poverty is “one of the leading

concerns in the context of the reduction of absolute poverty.” Further, the authors of that document

raise “questions” about how best to concentrate the efforts of the Mozambican government in reducing

female poverty. However, the PARPA II document seems to be ambiguous with respect to this issue.

In fact, there seems to be an acknowledgment that “achieving higher levels of schooling [among
females] is fundamental and will also make it easier for women to enter non-farm sectors that,

frequently, would earn her higher pay.” Yet, the PARPA II authors take the pragmatic view that “in the

next several years, the majority of them will continue to be unskilled and associated with the

agricultural sector.” Therefore, this author believes that PARPA II takes the position that things should

remain as they are for the time being as far as lack of education among women. It seems that the

PARPA II authors (and the ministers who approved the document) prefer to recommend that the

Mozambican government direct its resources toward improving farming technologies and infrastructure

(i.e., rural electrification) to improve the productivity of female subsistence farmers (“to increase the

time they have available to spend in other productive activities”) in the short term instead of directing

the state resources to improve access to primary education for girls and adult literacy education for

women.

Thus, it remains to be analyzed whether PARPA II’s policy prescriptions (per IMF guidelines)

will help improve access to elementary education among EP1-age girls or make their access to

education worse by creating an added pressure on female-headed households to become more

productive, including an increased dependency on the use of EP1-age girls’ manual labor in subsistence

agricultural activities.
 References
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