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Divorce is common enough in Senegal, as well as in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
To our knowledge, this is the first paper to study the impact of divorce on children's educational
outcomes in a developing country, while controlling for family-level characteristics using sibling
fixed effects. Contrary to findings on divorce in developed countries, we find that selection into
divorce is positive: Mothers who divorce are more educated than their counterparts, and more
likely to come from a better-off background. Despite this positive selection into divorce, it seems
that children of divorced parents still suffer from their divorce. Using a sibling fixed-effect
approach, we do not find any link between divorce and the likelihood to have attended primary
school. However, divorce when a child is aged 10 to 14 decreases the likelihood that this child
attends secondary school with respect to the likelihood that her/his older siblings attended
secondary school. This age range corresponds to the period during which most transitions from
primary school to secondary school happen.
