ABSTRACT

How and why did African households under colonial rule make the decision to educate their children or not, and how did this micro-level decision making affect the diffusion of education in colonial Ghana? This paper addresses these questions and shows that many households were reluctant to enrol their children in school because the costs of colonial education were prohibitive, and the benefits were limited. Unemployment of school leavers was a major social problem throughout the colonial era and returns to education did not justify investments in education. The demand for education was relatively high in areas where the demand for skilled labour was high, and from the late 1930s when there were growing pay-offs to colonial education. Overall, the paper points to the need to examine interactions between supply and demand factors in order to understand variations in human capital accumulation in sub-Saharan Africa.

摘要

殖民统治下的非洲家庭如何以及为何做出是否教育子女的决定，以及这种微观层面的决策如何影响殖民地加纳的教育传播？本文解决了这些问题，并表明许多家庭不愿意让他们的孩子上学，因为殖民教育的成本高得令人望而却步，而且收益有限。在整个殖民时代，离校生失业是一个主要的社会问题，教育回报并不能证明投资于教育是合理的。在对熟练劳动力的需求较高的地区，以及从 1930 年代后期开始，殖民教育的回报不断增加，对教育的需求相对较高。总体，