Amairame/girls-education-west-africa

Statistical and ML analysis of girls' secondary completion in Côte d'Ivoire (2021 DHS) — survey-weighted regression, XGBoost with fairness audit, mapping, and a live Streamlit dashboard. # Girls' Education, Risk, and What Works in West Africa ### A data-driven study of who finishes secondary school in Côte d'Ivoire — and where it would help most **🔗 Live interactive dashboard: girls-education-cote-divoire.streamlit.app** --- I'm from Côte d'Ivoire. In the country where I grew up, a girl's chance of finishing secondary school depends heavily on things she did not choose: how much money her family has, where she lives, and how old she was when she first married. The finish line is *la Terminale* — the final year of secondary school, when you sit for the *baccalauréat*, the national exam that certifies completion of secondary school. The bac is the gate: passing it decides whether a girl goes on to university to pursue what she loves, or to explore and find it. This project measures how much those early circumstances shape whether she ever reaches that gate — and tries to be honest about what the numbers can and cannot tell us. The guiding question is simple to say and hard to answer: **what helps a girl finish secondary school and earn her bac, and where would investment help most — so that a girl's future isn't decided by her family's income or how young she marries?** ## The headline finding Using the 2021 Demographic and Health Survey for Côte d'Ivoire (14,877 women), I find that among women aged 20 and older, **9.4% finished secondary school and earned the bac** (survey-weighted; this matches UNESCO's reported figure of ~13% for the most recent cohort once you account for age). But the average hides almost everything. Once I account for all the major factors at once, **two things dominate whether a girl finishes:** - **Household income.** A girl from one of the highest-income households has roughly **100 times the odds** of finishing compared to a girl from one of the lowest-income households — even after holding region, residence, age, and marriage timing constant. Among families with the fewest resources, finishing secondary school is c …