The DHS EdData Education Profiles series uses internationally comparable data from USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to characterize children’s participation in primary and secondary schooling and adults’ schooling attainment and literacy. These profiles provide information that can inform education decision-making when combined with other country-specific data. The DHS EdData Activity began in 1999, and the current set of profiles updates the original profiles with data from recent DHS surveys, adding to the number of countries profiled.
The profiles present data from nationally representative household surveys, which provide data at the household and individual levels. The data include educational attainment and schooling status of household members, allowing for the calculation of net and gross attendance ratios (disaggregated by sex, urban/rural residence, and region). The profiles also provide information on repetition, dropout, and survival rates by primary school grade, as well as adult primary and secondary school completion rates and educational attainment.
The DHS measures of children’s school attendance rates differ from traditional sources of international statistics, such as those produced by ministries of education or UNESCO. The DHS measures children’s participation in schooling using data on school attendance, collected from a representative sample of households. Net and gross attendance ratios (NAR and GAR) are calculated based on questions about whether children attend (or go to) school.
The DHS EdData Activity is supported primarily by USAID’s Office of Education in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade, with additional support from USAID’s Africa Bureau. DHS EdData is closely linked to the population and health sector DHS. In addition to analyzing the education data collected by the DHS, DHS EdData conducts various data collection activities, including in-depth household education surveys in a subset of DHS households.
The Haiti DHS EdData Education Profile presents data from the 1994 and 2000 Haiti Mortality, Morbidity, and Services Utilization Surveys (EMMUS). The profile shows that rates of primary school attendance were moderate, with sizeable decreases between 1994 and 2000. In 2000, 54% of primary school-age children attended primary school, down from 69% in 1994. Primary school attendance among female children age 6-11 decreased 12 percentage points, from 69% to 57%, while primary school attendance among male children decreased 17 percentage points, from 69% to 52%.
The profile also shows that adult educational attainment and literacy have increased over time, but gender disparities remained. In 2000, 32% of the population age 15 and older had completed primary school, up from 27% in 1994. Men were more likely than women to have completed primary school. In 2000, 6% of the population age 20 and older had completed secondary school or higher, with men twice as likely as women to have completed the level.
The profile presents data on primary school attendance ratios, including the net attendance ratio (NAR) and gross attendance ratio (GAR). The NAR among females was slightly higher than the NAR among males in 2000, whereas in 1994, there was gender parity in the NAR. The GAR among males was 125, compared with 120 among females in 2000. The percentage of students outside the official school age range (either younger than 6 or older than 11) increased from 1994 to 2000.
The profile also shows that children age 6-11 in urban areas were far more likely than children in rural areas to attend primary school in both 1994 and 2000. In 2000, 71% of children age 6-11 in urban areas attended primary school, compared to 47% in rural areas. There were large disparities by region in the net attendance ratio among primary school-age children in 2000, with the highest NAR in the Metropolitan Area (72%) and the lowest NAR in the Centre region (37%).