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You get what you pay for: Schooling incentives and child labor
Abstract
Can schooling promotion deter child participation in hazardous forms of child labor? We examine two interventions intended to promote schooling and deter child labor for children associated with carpet factories in Kathmandu. The first intervention provides scholarships for school-related expenses. The second provides the scholarship and an in-kind stipend conditional on school attendance. Paying for schooling expenses promotes schooling but only at the beginning of the school year when most schooling expenses occur. The scholarship combined with the conditional stipend increases school attendance rates by 11%, decreases grade failure rates by 46%, and reduces carpet weaving by 48%. Financial support lasted one year. Effects on schooling and weaving do not persist past the year of support. "You get what you pay for" when schooling incentives are used to combat hazardous child labor.
... Four studies investigated the impact of scholarships on child participation in economic activities and/or household chores (Datt and Uhe 2019; Edmonds and Shrestha 2014; Kremer et al. 2009;Sparrow 2007). Of these, one study compared the effect of receiving scholarships in isolation or combined with a conditional cash transfer (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014). Another study compared impacts between low-value and highvalue scholarships (Datt and Uhe 2019). ...
... Likewise, an RCT in Nepal found that combining scholarships with conditional cash transfers improved educational outcomes for children working in the carpet weaving industry, one of the worst forms of child labour. However, when the scholarships were offered in isolation, schooling outcomes remained mostly unchanged, mostly due to the low value of scholarships (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014). Effects were larger for girls, who were more likely to work in the weaving industry. ...
... Effects were larger for girls, who were more likely to work in the weaving industry. The combined scholarshipstipend programme reduced the probability that a girl failed her current grade by 66 per cent (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014). ...
Progress towards eliminating child labour stalled for the first time in 20 years from 2016 to 2020. This slowdown puts at risk the international community’s efforts to eliminate child labour by 2025. Action is needed.
Child Work and Child Labour: The impact of educational policies and programmes in low- and middle-income countries is a rapid evidence assessment of the evidence on the effectiveness of educational policies and programmes in addressing child labour in low- and middle-income countries. It focuses on describing the causal impact of schooling programmes and policies on labour outcomes, based on experimental and quasi- experimental studies, and systematic reviews. To the extent information is available within the considered studies, it also identifies and discusses the main pathways and mechanisms of impact, as well as the programme design features that influence programme effectiveness.
... 3 Work at brick kilns across South Asia is seasonal and often characterized by debt bondage, excessive work 1 Collusion between government agents and illegal actors is also common in weak states (Acemoglu, Robinson, and Santos 2013) 2 Considerable prior research has focused on families' supply of child labor, incentivizing parents not to send their children to work. For example, research has shown declines in child labor from insurance schemes (Landmann and Frölich 2015), schooling incentives (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014), and access to credit (Edmonds 2006;Guarcello, Mealli, and Rosati 2010;Baland, Demont, and Somanathan 2020) although there is limited evidence on aligning firm incentives to reduce child labor. Additionally, some of these reductions in child labor are only transitory (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014), and child labor does not seem to directly displace schooling in some cases (Ravallion and Wodon 2000;Martin 2023). ...
... For example, research has shown declines in child labor from insurance schemes (Landmann and Frölich 2015), schooling incentives (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014), and access to credit (Edmonds 2006;Guarcello, Mealli, and Rosati 2010;Baland, Demont, and Somanathan 2020) although there is limited evidence on aligning firm incentives to reduce child labor. Additionally, some of these reductions in child labor are only transitory (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014), and child labor does not seem to directly displace schooling in some cases (Ravallion and Wodon 2000;Martin 2023). There is also heterogeneity in the schooling substitution effect, with some finding instead a strong negative relationship between child labor and schooling (e.g., Kruger 2007; Bai and Wang 2020). ...
... Researchers have used evidence from the PROGRESA program in Mexico (Behrman et al., 2015) and a school attendance-conditional stipend program in Nepal (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014) to show interventions providing funds for common expenses can increase school attendance. Children of working mothers are themselves more likely to work than those with non-working mothers (DeGraff and Levison, 2009;Mukherjee and Das, 2008), and families often use child labor as insurance against risk, both as a precaution and after experiencing income shock. ...
... We measure only attendance, not educational outcomes, but other researchers have linked attending school to low test scores. Emerson et al. (2017) Where research shows that school attendance is lower among working than non-working children (Assaad et al., 2010;Beegle et al., 2009;Putnick and Bornstein, 2015;Ray and Lancaster, 2005), some evidence suggests only a partial tradeoff between school and work among child laborers, as the two activities are not perfect substitutes (Attanasio et al., 2010;Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014;Ravallion and Wodon, 2000). Evidence from compulsory schooling reform in Turkey points to higher substitutability in rural than urban areas (Dayioglu-Tayfur and Kirdar, 2020). ...
This paper examines school attendance among children in Nepal to evaluate the foregone human capital investment potentially associated with trading child labor for education. The researchers survey almost 2,900 household representatives and more than 3,400 children age 5 to 13. Response comparisons reveal that working children miss school more often than non-working children. Using a regression framework, this study confirms that working children are more likely to miss at least one day of school per week than non-working children. The children's self-reported data reveal that engagement in market work is associated with almost 1.5 missed school days per week for boys and girls. Girls engaged in domestic work attend 0.4 fewer school days per week. Using responses from household representatives, however, the researchers find a roughly 0.3-day reduction for children engaged in market work and no reduction associated with domestic work. Because the tradeoff diminishes using proxy responses, especially among girls, the researchers deploy a randomized survey experiment to investigate whether adults perceive schooling's benefits for boys and girls differently. The study finds that respondents spontaneously identify more benefits for boys than girls. The results warrant further research into which survey instruments accurately measure child labor and school attendance; furthermore, they highlight the importance of including domestic work in child labor research. JEL category: O10, J20
... Evaluation of a large number of CCT programs has provided evidence of their positive impacts on school enrollment and reduction in child labor. 8 A similar study in the context of Nepal that deserves a mention is by Edmonds and Shrestha (2015).Using a small scale CCT program, they examined the impacts of two different policy interventions intended to incentivize schooling and deter child labor from families working for carpet factories in Kathmandu. The first intervention provided scholarships for school-related expenses which were largely distributed in the beginning of the school year. ...
... Second, effective programs should be designed for the distribution of scholarship. As shown by Edmonds and Shrestha (2015), scholarship programs are more effective in increasing school attendance if the benefits are distributed conditional on the students' performance rather than flat payments in the beginning of the school year. ...
... For example, Barrera-Osorio et al. (2008) found that CCTs that only target one child in the household may simply redistribute child labour among siblings, and Camilo and Zuluaga (2022) found that siblings of children receiving a cash transfer have lower school enrolment and greater absenteeism. There is also an issue with the size of the transfer, where CCTs that are not large enough to cover the full cost of attending school run the risk of not impacting (or even at times increasing) child labour (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014;Datt and Uhe, 2019;de Hoop et al, 2019). The evidence for UCTs is somewhat more mixed than that for CCTs. ...
... Moreover, schools can make a contribution by identifying and giving effective support, especially psycho-emotional support, to these children. On a similar note, several studies state that general social support provided by schools, charities, and NGOs can improve the living conditions of the victims of child labor and consequently help preserve their dignity [33][34][35][36]. ...
Background
Respecting the dignity of child labor is one of their most urgent needs. In many cases, the dignity of child labor is not maintained in countries with unfavorable economic conditions. The aim of the present study was understand adolescents’ perceptions of their dignity in child labor.
Methods
This study is a qualitative research with conventional content analysis approach. Twenty teenagers who having work experience as child labor were selected from one welfare center and three charity centers in using purposeful sampling method in 2022–2023. Data was generated through individual, deep, and semi-structured interviews. In order to analyze the data was used Granheim and Lundman’s method.
Results
Three main themes were presented in this study including, “preservation of privacy and security”, “honoring individual identity to develop dignity” and “comprehensive support”, and 9 categories.
Conclusion
understand adolescents’ perceptions as child labor of their dignity, privacy and security of child labor victims and respect for their identity and all-round support are defined. And in this supportive environment, the dignity of working children is preserved and appropriate behavioral consequences are created. Therefore, it is suggested that a cultural and institutional background be provided in which all components of the child labor’s dignity are emphasized.
... However, education alone may not suffice, strengthening the case for combined interventions. Some studies have shown that school attendance may rise without any reduction in child work (de Hoop et al. 2017); or hazardous child labour is reduced but other forms of child employment increase (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014). ...
... Handa and Davis (2006) argue that the success of CCTs may result in policymakers losing focus on broader, long term policy interventions. There is also an issue with the size of the transfer, where CCTs that are not sufficiently large to cover the full cost of attending school run the risk of not impacting, or even at times increasing, child labour (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014;Datt and Uhe, 2019;de Hoop et al, 2019). The evidence on UCTs is somewhat more mixed compared to CCTs. ...
The focus of this report is on child labour, which is a main component of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8.7. After providing a brief background on child labour, this report provides an overview of the factors that research has identified as main contributors to child labor, categorized broadly as either microeconomic factors, macroeconomic factors, or other household factors. Microeconomic factors include household poverty, market imperfections, and the role of education in shaping outcomes while macroeconomic factors include economic growth and globalization. Other relevant parental and household factors are also discussed, such as altruism and cultural norms. The report next provides an overview of policies aimed at combating child labor, including policies related to the legal framework, poverty reduction initiatives, and access to education. A critical evaluation of the indicator used to measure child labor is conducted, focusing on standardization, measurement accuracy, conceptualization, and areas for potential improvement. Finally, the report identifies major challenges faced in eradicating child labor.
... In another study, Edmonds and Shrestha (2014) examined the impact of two types of scholarship programmes in Nepal on the school attendance of 660 children aged 10 to 16 identified as vulnerable. The children were randomly allocated to one of the treatments or a control. ...
This paper summarises the findings of a large-scale structured review of 73 studies to identify promising interventions to increase school enrolment and attendance, particularly in less developed countries where school attendance is not mandatory. Evidence from the stronger studies suggests that for children living in poverty, provision of easy access to schools, making schools free at point of delivery and incentivising attendance/enrolment with cash offers are the most promising interventions. Incentives with conditions attached are more effective than non-conditional incentives. Paying cash to parents is more effective for young children, while cash incentives are more effective for older children if given directly. Providing easy access to free schools seems most promising in improving school attendance and enrolment in low and middle-income countries.
... Yet, there is very little evidence on the long-term impact and sustainability of such programmes in ensuring sustained access (Snivstveit et al, 2016), especially if funded by outside donors for a limited period. Edmonds and Shrestha's (2014) paper, entitled You Get What You Pay For, is a cautionary tale in this respect. Sixteen months after it had ended, the researchers returned to the site of a one-year programme aimed at combatting child labour in a carpet-weaving factory in Nepal. ...
... The role of additional sectors could also be studied, such as that of domestic work, manufacturing, and construction [60,88]. Moreover, future studies could even extend to the role of additional factors that could influence child labor, such as infrastructure [71,74], political stability and conflicts [60,89,90], or the role of schooling promotion [91]. There is also limited existing literature on the role of the minors' gender in developing countries [13,38,66,[92][93][94][95][96]. ...
International capital flows and the operation of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are influenced by several socioeconomic and political factors. Among them, low labor cost is listed among the determinants that attract foreign capital, primarily foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, which in various cases is attributed to unskilled employees, including working children. Working children, mainly in developing countries, remain an important social issue which has attracted increasing research interest, as well as the coordinated efforts of international organizations. The present research aims to empirically investigate the interaction between FDI inflows and child labor in developing countries using panel data analysis. The paper includes an extensive literature review of related empirical research on the association between child labor and FDI inflows in developing countries. The novelty of the study is attributed to its effort to empirically investigate the causality between FDI and child labor in two geographic regions that present high rates of working children, namely sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. A sample of 42 developing countries from a period ranging from 1980 to 2019 was used and Granger causality tests were applied. The study concludes that there is a unidirectional causal relationship from FDI inflows to child labor in these regions and no causality was observed from child labor on macroeconomic independent variables. Several policies and proposals that will reduce or prevent child labor in the subsidiaries of multinational companies are included.
... In Cambodia, the Education Sector Support Project (CESSP), which provides scholarships to children in lower-secondary school conditional upon attendance and promotion, was found to increase enrolment by 25% (Filmer and Schady, 2011). In Nepal, an intervention which aimed to reduce child labour and improve education uptake for poor adolescents between the ages of 10 and 16 found that both scholarships that covered the cost of schooling and cash stipends improved attendance and reduced exam failure -especially for girls (for whom it reduced the rate of failure by 66%) (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014). In-kind educational stipends have also demonstrated success. ...
This briefing paper, which is based on a rapid evidence review, and focuses primarily on cash transfers, which account for the bulk of the evidence on adolescence and social protection, concentrates on adolescents aged 10-19. It takes a capabilities approach, which not only acknowledges adolescents’ multidimensional rights but–as Nussbaum (1997) notes– enables us to assess the ways in which public policies and services enable young people to really function in ways they value and ‘not just to have the right on paper’ (p. 295). Following the GAGE conceptual framework, we focus on six capabilities: education and learning, health and nutrition, bodily integrity and freedom from violence, psychosocial wellbeing, voice and agency, and economic empowerment (GAGE Consortium, 2017). For each, we begin by considering how gender norms shape child and adolescent development before then discussing the ways in which cash transfers and other social protection instruments may improve outcomes and what space there may be for social protection to shift not only outcomes but the social norms underpinning constraints. In the case of cash transfers, while it would be important from a programme design perspective to be able to distinguish between the effects of conditional, unconditional and labelled CT programmes in each domain, the evidence base is not sufficient to be able to systematically tease out these differences.
... In a Kathmandu case study (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014), a roughly 20% replacement of child income with conditional cash transfers almost eliminated child labour-at least for the programme period. However, lasting impacts are not likely if these policies are run on a short-term basis only, while an expensive long-term transfer policy may be beyond many LICs. ...
Chapter 7 focuses on children and youth, a critical topic given the young age structures in many low-income countries. Widespread child employment can dampen future economic growth through its negative impact on child development and depress current growth by reducing unskilled wages and discouraging the adoption of skill-intensive technologies. Rising incomes are associated with a greater demand for children’s education and leisure and with improvements in the family’s ability to buffer economic shocks without child labour. All of these factors lead to declines in the economic activity of children when income levels are on the rise. The chapter also discusses the challenges to youth employment in LICs. While the large cohort of youth entering Africa’s labour force is better educated than previous cohorts, jobs remain elusive in the formal wage sector, given the limited success in African economies in structural transformation from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity non‐agricultural sectors.
... In a Kathmandu case study (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014), a roughly 20% replacement of child income with conditional cash transfers almost eliminated child labour-at least for the programme period. However, lasting impacts are not likely if these policies are run on a short-term basis only, while an expensive long-term transfer policy may be beyond many LICs. ...
Employment and job creation are key components in achieving economic growth and sustainable development, particularly in low-income countries. The growing size of the working-age population in many developing regions underscores the need to further strengthen labour market structures in the world’s poorest countries. Despite the importance of studying emerging labour markets, and investigating which policies are more successful, the evidence is rather limited. Against this backdrop, the joint IZA/FCDO Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries (GLM|LIC) programme was established and has taken important steps to close this gap. Covering topics such as poverty, informality and rural labour, skills training and behaviour, gender inequality, youth and child labour, and migration, this volume presents key takeaways from most recent research in the field. Which development policies will work, which strategies will fail? The authors provide an in-depth discussion of current development programmes, based on the results of new evaluation studies, and derive important policy lessons.
... One study in Ecuador found that CTs lead families to keep children in school and postpone child entry into the labor market (Edmonds & Schady, 2012). A second study in Nepal found that a CT conditional on education increased school enrollment and decreased child labor (Edmonds & Shrestha, 2014). ...
Improving learning evidence and outcomes for those most in need in developing countries is at the heart of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4). This timely volume brings together contributions on current empirical research and analysis of emerging trends that focus on improving the quality of education through better policy and practice, particularly for those who need improved 'learning at the bottom of the pyramid' (LBOP).
This volume brings together academic research experts, government officials and field-based practitioners. National and global experts present multiple broad thematic papers – ranging from the effects of migration and improving teaching to the potential of educational technologies, and better metrics for understanding and financing education. In addition, local experts, practitioners and policymakers describe their own work on LBOP issues being undertaken in Kenya, India, Mexico and Ivory Coast. The contributors argue persuasively that learning equity is a moral imperative, but also one that will have educational, economic and social impacts. They further outline how achieving SDG4 will take renewed and persistent effort by stakeholders to use better measurement tools to promote learning achievement among poor and marginalized children.
This volume builds on the second international conference on Learning at the Bottom of the Pyramid (LBOP2).* It will be an indispensable resource for policymakers, researchers and government thinktanks, and local experts, as well as any readers interested in the implementation of learning equity across the globe.
... One study in Ecuador found that CTs lead families to keep children in school and postpone child entry into the labor market (Edmonds & Schady, 2012). A second study in Nepal found that a CT conditional on education increased school enrollment and decreased child labor (Edmonds & Shrestha, 2014). ...
Improving learning evidence and outcomes for those most in need in developing countries is at the heart of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4). This timely volume brings together contributions on current empirical research and analysis of emerging trends that focus on improving the quality of education through better policy and practice, particularly for those who need improved 'learning at the bottom of the pyramid' (LBOP).
This volume brings together academic research experts, government officials and field-based practitioners. National and global experts present multiple broad thematic papers – ranging from the effects of migration and improving teaching to the potential of educational technologies, and better metrics for understanding and financing education. In addition, local experts, practitioners and policymakers describe their own work on LBOP issues being undertaken in Kenya, India, Mexico and Ivory Coast. The contributors argue persuasively that learning equity is a moral imperative, but also one that will have educational, economic and social impacts. They further outline how achieving SDG4 will take renewed and persistent effort by stakeholders to use better measurement tools to promote learning achievement among poor and marginalized children.
This volume builds on the second international conference on Learning at the Bottom of the Pyramid (LBOP2).* It will be an indispensable resource for policymakers, researchers and government thinktanks, and local experts, as well as any readers interested in the implementation of learning equity across the globe.
... The impact of CCT programs on test scores, as a measure of educational performance, is weak at best (García and Saavedra, 2017). While there are some studies that examine the impact of CCT programs on the pattern of household expenditure (Maluccio and Flores, 2005;Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014), we offer a new angle in this literature by investigating the allocation of educational resources within the household in the presence of a CCT program. 3 In line with previous studies, we find that CCT programs were effective in bringing girls to schools. ...
Gender parity in education—an important global development goal—has been primarily measured through school enrollment, and the gender parity in education quality has received limited attention until recently. We address this issue by highlighting the intrahousehold allocation of education expenditure. We extend the hurdle model into a three-part model to enable decomposition of households’ education decisions into enrollment, total education expenditure, and share of the total education expenditure on the core component, or items relating to the quality of education such as private tutoring. We apply this model to four rounds of nationally representative household surveys from Bangladesh, a country that offers a unique setting in South Asia with the Female Stipend Programs (FSPs), a nationwide gender-targeted conditional cash transfer program. We demonstrate a strong profemale bias in the enrollment decision but contrasting promale bias in the other two decisions, conditional on enrollment. We argue that this contradirectional gender gap is unique to Bangladesh and that it can be explained partly by the FSPs. Both the three-part model and a separate analysis of double-difference model show that the FSPs promoted girls’ secondary school enrollment. However, the FSPs did not narrow the gender gap in the intrahousehold allocation of educational resources. Consistently, we find a gender gap in on-time completion of secondary school. Our findings collectively highlight the complex interplay of intrahousehold decisions and underscore the importance of minding the gender gap in the quality of education and implementing complementary policies to address it in developing countries.
... Several international organizations provide country-level data on child labour, including the ILO, the World Bank, the United Nations and UNICEF, as well as child labour indicators (e.g., ILO's indicator on the Proportion and Number of Children aged 5-17 years engaged in Child Labour, UNICEF's indicator on the Percentage of Children aged 5-17 years engaged in Child Labour etc.), while certain previous studies have used the secondary school non-enrollment rates as a proxy for child labour (Kucera 2002;Busse and Braun 2004;Braun 2006;Beegle et al. 2009), although several minor employees go to school and it is argued that school enrolment and child labour are not incompatible activities; therefore, combining child labour and school enrolment is feasible but difficult (Ravallion and Wodon 2000;Attanasio et al. 2010;Edmonds and Shrestha 2014). ...
The consequences of the recent pandemic have been disproportionately disruptive to several social groups, including children. As developing economies have been firefighting the recent pandemic, the welfare of minors could be affected and children’s economic exploitation and abuse could increase. Therefore, the present research aims to shed light on and to investigate the association between child labour in developing countries and pandemics, including the coronavirus, through conducting a systematic literature review on previous empirical studies. The present research concludes that previous studies on non-COVID-19 pandemics have mainly focused on the African economies, while studies on the recent pandemic have focused on Asian countries. In addition, differences were observed in relation to the methodological approaches and the characteristics of minor employees and the protection services in certain countries have proven to be insufficient. Suggestions for future research and policy implications are presented.
... Three of the 10 are girl-targeted interventions, including cash transfers to girls who had previously dropped out of school -conditional on school attendance in Malawi (Baird et al. 2016), improving school water and sanitation systems in Kenya (Garn et al. 2013), and providing private school subsidies for girls in Pakistan (Kim, Alderman, and Orazem 1999). Six of the general interventions are similarly related to offering cash for education in different countries (Maluccio, Murphy, and Regalia 2010;Edmonds and Shrestha 2014;Eyal, Woolard, and Burns 2014;Benhassine et al. 2015;Duflo, Dupas, and Kremer 2017), building village schools in Afghanistan (Burde and Linden 2013) and another intervention is focused on malaria prevention in The Gambia (Jukes et al. 2006). Altogether, 6 of the 10 involve cash transfers, and one more -subsidies in Pakistan -similarly involves reducing the cost of schooling. ...
What is the best way to improve access and learning outcomes for girls? This review brings together evidence from 267 educational interventions in 54 low- and middle-income countries – regardless of whether the interventions specifically target girls – and identifies their impacts on girls. To improve access and learning, general interventions deliver average gains for girls that are comparable to girl-targeted interventions. General interventions have similar impacts for girls as for boys. Taken together, these findings suggest that many educational gains for girls may be achieved through nontargeted programs. Many of the most effective interventions to improve access for girls relax household-level constraints (such as cash transfer programs), and many of the most effective interventions to improve learning for girls involve improving the pedagogy of teachers. Girl-targeted interventions may make the most sense when addressing constraints that are unique to, or most pronounced for, girls.
... These savings may free up some money which can be spent on education. In the absence of saving vehicles, such as bank accounts, households resort to less-efficient strategies such as the purchase of assets or durables that can be sold to the market during hard times (Edmonds and Shrestha 2014). Although households with a sufficiently high level of assets are able to cope with transitory income shocks (Beegle et al. 2006), they could have less money to invest in education, a cost of around 1.25 USD a day per child in low-income countries (UNESCO 2015). ...
This paper shows that mobile money technology—an electronic wallet service that allows users to deposit, transfer, and receive money using their mobile phones—is positively correlated with increased school participation of children in school age. By using data from 4 African countries, we argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We find that mobile money increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to different empirical models. In a nutshell, our results show that 1 million children could start attending school in low-income countries if mobile money was available to all.
... The estimation of production functions is always delicate because it might be difficult to observe all inputs, and fail-4 This finding corresponds to a decline in paid employment by 41% and in unpaid employment by 34%. 5 The transfer in Colombia is approximately 5% of the GNI per capita when a child is in secondary school. 6 See, for instance: Barrera-Osorio, Bertrand, Linden, and Perez-Calle (2011), Todd (2011), Bourguignon, Ferreira, andLeite (2003), Dammert (2009), Carpio, Loayza, andWada (2016), Edmonds and Shrestha (2014), Galiani and McEwan (2013), De Leon and Parker (2000), Ravallion and Wodon (2000), Schady and Araujo (2006), Skoufias, Parker, Behrman, and Pessino (2001 ure to observe all inputs increases the risk of biased estimates. In the case of LSMS-ISA, organic and inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation information are also collected. ...
In developing countries, the opportunity costs of children’s time can significantly hinder universal education. This paper studies one of these opportunity costs: we estimate the agricultural productivity of children aged 10 to 15 years old using the LSMS-ISA panel survey in Tanzania. Since child labor can be endogenous, we exploit the panel structure of the data and instrument child labor with changes in the age composition of the household. One day of child work leads to an increase in production value by roughly US1.92. However, a complete simulation of a hypothetical conditional cash transfer shows that even $10/month transfers would fail to achieve universal school enrollment of children aged 10 to 15 years old.
... Thus, given the relatively high cost of education, they will substitute education with child labour to achieve an increase in current income and also promote human capital transfer and development through existing family trades (Beegle et al., 2009;Del Carpio et al., 2016;Rogers & Swinnerton, 2008). The expectation is that when the cost of schooling decreases or is subsidised through cash transfers or related programmes, parents will be more likely to favour schooling over child labour (Edmonds & Shrestha, 2014). This is, however, not always the case. ...
We examine the impact of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) on child labour and educational outcomes. We first develop a simple theoretical model where we explore how government transfers financed by labour income taxation affect household decisions on child labour and education. We then empirically examine the impact of Pakistan's Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), which is the largest cash transfer program in South Asia, on child labour and school outcomes. We employ a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to estimate the average effect of the UCTs on child labour and school outcomes, and find that UCTs have a positive and statistically significant impact on enrolment and grade promotion, but no impact on school dropout rates in the short run. The BISP intervention increases grade promotion among boys but not among girls. With regards to child labour, we find that the BISP intervention has no impact on child labour in the short run; but in the medium to long run, cash transfers help to reduce child labour among boys as well as girls. These findings are consistent with our theoretical predictions and also robust to a series of robustness and sensitivity checks.
... My results make three contributions to the existing literature. First, I contribute to the literature exploring the effects of income uncertainty and realized income shocks on child labor and human capital investments (Jalan and Ravallion 2001;Bhalotra and Heady 2003;Dehejia and Gatti 2005;Beegle, Dehejia, and Gatti 2006;Edmonds 2006;Fitzsimons 2007;Kruger 2007;Edmonds and Schady 2012;Kazianga 2012;Edmonds and Shrestha 2014;Akresh et al. 2017;Shah and Steinberg 2017). To date, much of the empirical work on child labor has focused on extensive margin measures of participation. ...
How does income uncertainty affect human capital investments in agrarian economies? Using child‐level panel data, I exploit a medium‐run change in mean‐preserving rainfall variability to identify the effects of income uncertainty on the child labor decisions and human capital investments of smallholder farmers in rural Ethiopia. I estimate that increased rainfall variability is associated with less child labor and more schooling, consistent with a diversification mechanism. These findings highlight the empirical relevance of income uncertainty for decision making and household investment in rural economies. I find no evidence that rainfall variability is associated with past, present, or future rainfall, nor with income, wealth, and agricultural outcomes. As such, residual variation in realized income shocks—the main confounding interpretation—does not appear to explain the results.
... An important role of cash transfers is to reduce the risk of children leaving school for work at the end of key school transition ages (such as the end of primary school in most countries where child labour is rampant). Edmonds & Schady (2012 [20]) for instance, studied the impact of an unconditional cash transfer, paid monthly on an on-going basis on child participation in paid employment in Ecuador where children of poor families often start to work at the end of primary school. Recipients of the cash transfer seemed to use the funds to continue the schooling of children past primary into secondary. ...
Sustainable Development Goal target 8.7 aims to eradicate child labour in all its forms by 2025. Ten years before this deadline, the objective is far from being achieved since in 2016, about one-in-ten children (152 million in total) aged 5 to 17 were engaged in child labour worldwide, many of them as unpaid family workers in agriculture. Nearly half of the children in child labour were in hazardous work and exposed to serious health and safety risks. Moreover, about one-third of children in child labour do not attend school at all; the others go to school, but not all the time. Children in child labour are more likely to leave school early, before grade completion, and underperform in school tests.
This paper reviews child labour trends, and the literature on its causes and consequences. It also discusses policies to combat child labour based on the lessons of the available evidence. Countries must combat child labour by addressing it from all its “demand” and “supply” side dimensions: by strengthening social protection to combat extreme poverty, by investing in the education to make it an affordable alternative to child labour, and by encouraging the diffusion of technologies that make it possible to do without child labour. While most countries have adopted laws that prohibit child labour, the paper argues that countries can do more to enforce these laws and regulations, where necessary strengthen labour inspections and monitoring systems, and promote responsible business practices.
... One exception is Edmonds (2006), who finds that the South African old-age pension significantly decreases child full-time employment, defined as 40 or more hours of paid work a week. 5 Another exception is Edmonds and Shrestha (2014), who find that conditional scholarships and school stipends reduce child labor in carpet weaving in Nepal, a 3 ...
Cash transfer programs are rapidly becoming a key component of the social safety net of many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The primary aim of these programs is to help households improve their food security and to smooth consumption during periods of economic duress. However, beneficiary households have also been shown to use these programs to expand their microentrepreneurial activities. Cluster-randomized trials carried out during the rollout of large-scale programs in Malawi and Zambia show that children may increase their work in the household enterprise through such programs. Both programs increased forms of work that may be detrimental to children, such as activities that expose children to hazards in Malawi and excessive working hours in Zambia. However, both programs also induced positive changes in other child well-being domains, such as school attendance and material well-being, leading to a mixed and inconclusive picture of the implications of these programs for children.
... The determinants of the primary school participation in developing countries have been widely discussed in the empirical literature, with such determinants ranging from human capital gain from schooling (Bedi and Marshall, 2002), adult literacy (Handa, 2002), mid-day school meal program (Afridi, 2011), the existence of a school building (Handa, 2002;Filmer, 2014), financial support (Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014) to availability of sanitary products for female students (Oister and Thornton, 2011). Among the factors that affect primary school participation, the importance of sanitation facilities in the school environment has been highlighted in the literature (Birdthistle et al., 2011;UNICEF, 2005;UNICEF/IRC, 2006). ...
This study empirically examines the effects of school toilet provision on the primary-school attendance rate in Kenya. Using over 4200 school-level observations between 2013 and 2015, the results consistently show that an increase in the school toilet availability per student significantly raises the primary school attendance rate among both boys and girls. Moreover, the effects are larger for girls than for boys, and especially for pubescent girls. The results suggest that the provision of school toilets is critical to reduce the gender education gap in developing countries, as well as to improve overall school attendance.
... Countries in diverse settings have implemented similar programs, enhancing the effects of their child labor provisions by combining compulsory schooling with conditional income support to families. Such countriesincluding Nepal, Colombia and Malawihave seen higher school attendance and a decrease in the rate of child labor (Barrera-Osorio et al., 2011;Covarrubias et al., 2012;Edmonds and Shrestha, 2014). It should be noted that the level of income support must be adequate to raise family income over the poverty line, or a level at which income from child labor is no longer necessary for economic stability. ...
Purpose
Nearly every country has committed to protect children from work that could be harmful or interfere with their education by ratifying the International Labour Organization Minimum Age Convention (C138). Yet there is little transparency and accountability around whether countries have followed through on these commitments by passing legislation to protect children from work. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reports on analyses conducted of child labor legislation from all 193 United Nations member states to determine whether countries that have committed to ending child labor have taken the first step by passing legislation to protect children and youth from: work that is likely to be hazardous, work that is likely to interfere with their education and work that is harmful to their healthy development.
Findings
Findings show one in five ratifiers legally allow children to do hazardous work, and a similar number permit admission to employment at a young age. Moreover, legislative loopholes significantly undermine the protections that do exist in many countries.
Originality/value
Existing reporting mechanisms sometimes obscure whether central legal protections are in place, make cross-country comparisons difficult and impede the analysis of possible relationships between policies and outcomes across countries. This paper illustrates a novel approach to provide transparency and accountability on whether countries are meeting child labor commitments by using quantitative, globally comparable policy indicators.
This study examines the impact of mothers’ labor force participation (MLFP) on child time allocation to explore the associating factors with boys’ disengagement from education in developing regions. Using original time-use data from the rural Philippines and employing exogenous institutional changes in the regional labor market, the study finds that MLFP widens the gender gap in child time-allocation patterns, with daughters dedicating more time to educational activities than sons. This effect is particularly pronounced when formal working and self-employed mothers are compared, suggesting that daughters respond to their parents as role models in terms of occupational stability, which requires educational attainment. For boys, the study explores the mechanism behind the effect by comparing the extended family setting with other scenarios to determine whether diminished maternal opportunities to monitor children affect sons’ educational engagement. Overall, these findings contribute to an understanding of the complex dynamics between maternal employment and gender gaps in children’s human capital formation in conditions of poverty.
Realizing that abolition of child labour is practically infeasible, researchers lately have shifted their interest in the personal lives of child labourers using theoretical models such as ethno-theories, eco-culture and psycho-social development. The impact of such new drive on the lives of child labourers, however, is yet to be assessed but it has certainly thrown light on the finer aspects such as micro-culture of economic activities. Current research follows a quantitative approach to explore the work culture at different types of workplaces of child labourers and their physical abuse. It also studies the development of an essential humane aspect i.e. moral development and how far it is affected by the work culture and physical abuse. The study also tries to identify causation between the studied variables using an approachable sample of physically abused child labourers. Finally, the researcher tries to explain the intricacies of the cultural setup in which child labourers grow. To make more perceivable and relevant the complexity of child labour, the neoclassical approach to the value of children has shifted the focus of social scientists and policy makers from poverty indicators totheir personal and family contexts and their resultant social and educational growth. Child labourers not only provide crucial contribution to their family"s subsistence but also help in production of the goods that reach the market at prices far below their labour value. In the midst of the need to realize self-esteem through paid work and international moral pressure on the government, the poor child gets unwittingly lost somewhere while facing harsh realities and abuse at work places. Many countries have now either ratified or adopted modified versions of child labour legislation prepared and propagated by the ILO (ILO, 1988, ILO, 1991). Legislation, however, selects chronological age as the universal measure of biological and psychological maturity, and it rejects cultural and social meanings attached to the local systems (La Fontaine, 1978). Furthermore, the current child labour policies emanating from ratifications and legislations fail to address the quality of their lives instead reinforce paradoxically children"s vulnerability to exploitation (Nieuwenhuys, 1996) and unknowingly push them further into a horrifying work-culture of unorganized settings. The work that children do in dingy, dark workplaces is likely to remain hidden because children are not in close contact with supportive adult spokespersons and the nature of their work may also be illicit or illegal
We test the impact of a reciprocal adult labor program, Ajuda Mútua (AM), on child labor and schooling. AM was introduced into the province of Nampula in Mozambique, an area where farm production relies on child labor, potentially due to labor and financial market failures. Using difference in differences, we estimate that AM reduces child labor by eight percentage points. We argue that AM reduces child labor by providing low-cost adult labor and potentially increasing farm productivity. We benchmark the AM results against the impact of Village Saving and Loan Associations (VSLA) and AM and VSLA in combination (VAM). Neither VSLA nor VAM reduce child labor. If credit is used in a way that increases labor demand beyond what can be accommodated by AM labor, child labor may increase. We conclude that addressing labor market failures may be more successful at reducing child labor than addressing financial market failures. Results on schooling are mixed.
This paper studies the effects of cash versus in-kind transfers on the time allocation of children exploiting the randomized rollout of a program which transferred either cash or a basket of food to poor households in Mexico. Children in cash-recipient households experience a significantly larger decrease in paid employment and hours of work, and an increase in schooling, as compared to children in in-kind-recipient households. Both transfers are given to a female member of the household to enhance women’s participation in household decision-making. The difference between the cash and in-kind impacts on child time allocation is entirely driven by households presenting characteristics associated with lower female decision-making power. Thus, differences in child employment responses across transfer modalities are likely related to women-targeted transfers having larger effects on female empowerment when provided in cash.
Child labor is a pernicious problem throughout the developing world, but conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) could reduce the number of working children. We evaluate the effectiveness of CCTs at attenuating child labor based on our analysis of a massive administrative dataset on Brazil’s applicants to social programs between 2001 and 2015. We use Multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) as an instrument for receiving the Bolsa Família stipend. Receiving the stipend does not offset the cost of an exogenous increase in family size, does not reduce child laborers’ participation in the workforce and does not improve educational outcomes for child laborers in households with Multiples births. Instead, contextual and familial factors appear to shape program efficacy in mitigating this troubling practice.
From education to working conditions, from income to discrimination, social determinants of health (SDH) shape the majority of health outcomes. Governments are often best positioned to address the major SDH on a population-wide basis. In 2015, governments around the world committed to improving all core SDH when all countries agreed to a set of goals that would improve education, work, income, and equal opportunity, among other areas, in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using data from the WORLD Policy Analysis Center, this article highlights how quantitative policy measures can be used to hold governments accountable for their commitments to the SDGs and thus to improve the SDH. Three areas are examined in detail to illustrate this approach to monitoring policy change: ensuring an adequate income, enhancing equal opportunities at work by prohibiting discrimination and sexual harassment, and enabling children and youth to complete their education.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 42 is April 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Introduction: Anger might spread from epileptic discomfort and resentment to full-scale anger. But it is quite a natural phenomenon and, like other emotions and excitements, is a sign of human emotions. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of anger management training on the rate of child labor aggression in the city of Isfahan. Methods: This study was a pre-test, post-test interventional with a group. The statistical population of this study includes Isfahan labor children at two social centers in 2017; through which, sixty children were selected by the available sampling method and completed Bass &Perry Aggression Questionnaire. After the implementation of the questionnaire, the experimental group was treated eight sessions of sixty minutes, one session per week, and the control group received no intervention. Data were analyzed using SPSS21 software and covariance analysis. Results: The findings of this study showed that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental and control group in the post-test. In other words, anger management training reduced children's aggression at the post-test stage. (P<0.001) Conclusions: Based on the findings, it can be expressed that anger management training is one of the most important factors influencing the control of aggression among labor children. Hence, according to the results of the present study, it is offered that the use of anger management training, as one of the useful therapeutic training in reducing aggression, should be more considered. Please cite this article as follows: Khankosh M, Amini Rarani M, and Nosratabadi M. The effect of anger management training on aggression of labor children in Isfahan, 2017. Quarterly journal of social work. 2020; 9 (1); 24-31
The impact of national efforts to increase supply of education, such as Nepal’s National Education System Plan, may vary across social groups due to differences in social factors that determine access to and demand for education. This paper studies the heterogeneous impact of this reform across gender and caste groups—two important social dimensions in Nepal’s context—over two generations. It uses data from the Nepal National Population and Housing Census 2011 and implements a difference-in-differences framework that utilizes across district variation in intensity of the reform measured by placement of trained teachers per 100 children and across cohort variation in exposure determined by birth year. The study finds that the reform improved females’ education attainment, but such positive effects are not present among women belonging to lower-caste subgroups. In addition, it finds that the reform had positive effects on schooling of the next generation; the multigenerational effects are also concentrated among girls from higher-caste households. The study validates its main findings by conducting a placebo exercise on a sample of individuals who had surpassed their school-going age by the time of the reform.
Background
More than half of the children in the world experience some form of interpersonal violence every year. As compared with high‐income countries, policy responses in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) are limited due to resource constraints and paucity of evidence for effective interventions to reduce violence against children in their own contexts, amongst other factors.
Objectives
The aim of this evidence and gap map (EGM) is to provide an overview of the existing evidence available and to identify gaps in the evidence base on the effectiveness of interventions to reduce violence against children in LMICs. This report covers evidence published in English; a follow‐up study is under preparation focusing on evidence in five additional languages—Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
Methods
The intervention‐outcome framework for this EGM is based on INSPIRE—Seven Strategies for Ending Violence against Children, published by WHO and other partners in 2016. The seven strategies include implementation and enforcement of laws; norms and values, safe environment; parent–child and caregiver support; income and economic strengthening; response and support services; education and life skills. The search included both academic and grey literature available online. We included impact evaluations and systematic reviews that assessed the effectiveness of interventions to reduce interpersonal violence against children (0–18 years) in LMICs (World Bank, 2018b). Interventions targeting subpopulation of parents, teachers and caregivers of 0–18 years’ age group were also included. A critical appraisal of all included studies was carried out using standardised tools.
Results
The map includes 152 studies published in English of which 55 are systematic reviews and 97 are impact evaluations. Most studies in the map are from Sub‐Saharan Africa. Education and life skills are the most widely populated intervention area of the map followed by income and economic strengthening interventions. Very few studies measure impact on economic and social outcomes, and few conduct cost‐analysis.
Conclusion
More studies focusing on low‐income and fragile and conflict‐affected settings (FCS) and studying and reporting on cost‐analysis are required to address gaps in the evidence. Most interventions covered in the literature focused on addressing a wide range of forms of violence and harm, which limited understanding of how and for whom the interventions work in a given context, for specific forms of violence. More impact evaluation studies are required that assess specific forms of violence, gendered effects of interventions and on diverse social groups in a given context, utilising mixed methods.
We use the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey to evaluate the extent women are included in Myanmar’s dynamic transformation process and the relative barriers that prohibit their inclusion between 2005 and 2010. Women play an active role in the labor force during a period of massive structural change. Their growing importance is substantiated by their increasing placement in manufacturing jobs near and away from home. Despite their increasing labor force participation, women’s engagement in manufacturing is negatively associated with household welfare. This may be a function of a gender pay gap or reflect households’ inability to substitute the labor of women to complete specific tasks related to household production. Future investments in surveys in Myanmar will improve our ability to identify which factors systematically provide an enabling environment for female labor participation, mobility, and improvements in well-being.
This evidence map shows where evidence exists on interventions to tackle trafficking, child and forced labour in South Asia
Available at: https://www.gov.uk/dfid-research-outputs/modern-slavery-prevention-and-responses-in-south-asia-an-evidence-map
Despite numerous investments that have been made to increase access to education in sub-Saharan Africa, a noteworthy share of children drop out of school prior to completing primary education. To address this issue, this thesis examines the factors that drive education decisions in a rural risky environment. The first chapter focuses on one of the core determinant of education investment that has been under-explored, the opportunity costs of education. To identify these costs that can significantly hinder education, we determine children's productivity on the farm and provide an estimate range of the value of one day of child labor. In order to better understand education decisions in rural sub-Saharan Africa, the second chapter assesses the different benefits of education in rural Tanzania, where family farm is the dominant structure in agriculture and where the technology level is low. Finally, the third chapter investigates whether productivity shocks are detrimental to educational achievement and children’s cognitive skills by considering two particular aspects, the age at which shocks occur, and the length of shocks. This subject is all the more relevant today when the number of productivity shocks is growing. Throughout these three chapters which focus on rural Tanzania, this thesis provides some insight into the role of public policies in protecting and promoting education.
We exploit an extension of compulsory schooling in Turkey to identify which population segments that otherwise would not have attended high school complied with the law and which type of schools they chose to attend. By adopting a regression discontinuity design, we find that the reform increased high school attendance for both boys and girls. The main compliers with the reform among boys were those who would have participated in paid employment prior to the change in law. Conversely, female compliers would have likely not been in education, employment, or training (NEET), or they could have been employed in unpaid work. Although regional poverty rates do not affect the compliance rates for boys or girls, we find that the reform had a positive impact on girls’ high school attendance only in more religiously conservative regions, and that the NEET status of girls in these regions declined. Finally, we find that the marginal students chose to attend vocational high schools, as opposed to academic high schools. We provide some suggestive evidence showing that the increase in vocational school attendance was not driven by an increase in the supply of these schools.
This paper explores child protection based on three factors; child abuse, child labour and child substance abuse. The analysis is based on a cohort of 17,848 vulnerbale households and the children in therein studied over a period of four years under the “sustainable comprehensive repsonses for vulnerable children and tehir families project” implemented in rural Uganda between 2011 and 2017. We find overall child protection factors mentioned above improved over the four years alongside household vulnerability. Howveer we observe that compared to the rest of the vulnerable households, the children who had experience child abuse, used susbanctes and alcohol and experience child labour were less likely to transition out of vulnerability compared to the others. We also found out that these children were less likely to be enrolled in school over the foru years and were more likely to be absent from school. We conclude that poor child protection indtcaors amongst the vulnerable children compound their household and individual vulnerability and increase the likelihood that their basic rights will be violated. We recommend that child protection issues, and child rights specifically should be brought at the forefront of all child protection interventions.
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Investment in human capital is an important tool for reducing poverty. However, the poor may lack the capacity to aspire, which often results in underinvestment in their children’s education. This paper studies the effect of a social program on the educational aspirations of the poor, and explores the role of exposure to educated professionals as a possible channel for increasing aspirations. First, using differences-in-differences, we show that beneficiary parents of the Mexican antipoverty program PROGRESA have higher educational aspirations for their children of a third of a school year than do non-beneficiary parents. This effect corresponds to a 15% increase in the proportion of parents who aspire for their children to finish college. Then, we exploit the design of the program whose requirements cause its target population to have different levels of mandated exposure to doctors and nurses. Our triple difference estimate shows that, educational aspirations for children from high-exposure households (relative to low- exposure households) in treatment villages (relative to control villages) were a third of a school year higher six months after the start of the program (relative to before its introduction). These results suggest that the change in aspirations is driven by exposure to highly educated professionals.
Does child labor decrease as household income rises? This question has important implications for the design of policy on child labor. This paper focuses on a program of unconditional cash transfers in Ecuador. It argues that the effect of a small increase in household income on child labor should be concentrated among children most vulnerable to transitioning from schooling to work. The paper finds support for this hypothesis. Cash transfers have small effects on child time allocation at peak school attendance ages and among children already out of school at baseline, but have large impacts at ages and in groups most likely to leave school and start work. Additional income is associated with a decline in paid work that takes place away from the child's home. Declines in work for pay are associated with increases in school enrollment, especially for girls. Increases in schooling are matched by an increase in education expenditures that appears to absorb most of the cash transfer. However, total household expenditures do not increase with the transfer and appear to fall in households most impacted by the transfer because of the decline in child labor.
In the last decade, the most popular policy tool used to increase human capital in developing countries has been the conditional cash transfer program. A large literature has shown significant mean impacts on schooling, health, and child labor. This paper examines heterogeneous effects using random-assignment data from the Red de Proteccion Social in rural Nicaragua. Using interactions between the targeting criteria and the treatment indicator, estimates suggest that children located in more impoverished localities experienced a larger impact of the program on schooling in 2001, but this finding is reversed in 2002. Estimated quantile treatment effects indicate that there is considerable heterogeneity in the impacts of the program on the distribution of food expenditures, as well as total expenditures. In particular, households at the lower end of the expenditure distribution experienced a smaller increase in expenditures. This paper also presents evidence of the rank invariance assumption to help clarify the interpretation of the quantile treatment effect in the development literature context.
Do the short and medium term adjustment costs associated with trade liberalization influence schooling and child labor decisions? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991 tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schooling and decline in child labor. However, communities that relied heavily on employment in protected industries before liberalization do not experience as large an increase in schooling or decline in child labor. The data suggest that this failure to follow the national trend of increasing schooling and diminishing work is associated with a failure to follow the national trend in poverty reduction. Schooling costs appear to play a large role in this relationship between poverty, schooling, and child labor. Extrapolating from our results, our estimates imply that roughly half of India's rise in schooling and a third of the fall in child labor during the 1990s can be explained by falling poverty and therefore improved capacity to afford schooling.
"In 2000, the Nicaraguan government implemented a conditional cash transfer program designed to improve the nutritional, health, and educational status of poor households, and thereby to reduce short- and long-term poverty. Based on the Mexican government's successful PROGRESA program, Nicaragua's Red de Protección Social (RPS) sought to supplement household income, reduce primary school dropout rates, and increase the health care and nutritional status of children under the age of five. This report represents IFPRI's evaluation of phase I of RPS. It shows that the program was effective in low-income areas and particularly effective when addressing health care and education needs. The report offers the first extensive assessment of a Nicaraguan government antipoverty program." Authors' Abstract
It is often argued that child labour comes at the expense of schooling and so perpetuates poverty for children from poor families. To test this claim we study the effects on children's labour force participation and school enrollments of the pure school-price change induced by a targeted enrollment subsidy in rural Bangladesh. Our theoretical model predicts that the subsidy increases schooling, but its effect on child labour is ambiguous. Our empirical model indicates that the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labour. Substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy.
A seven-year randomized evaluation suggests education subsidies reduce adolescent girls' dropout, pregnancy, and marriage but not sexually transmitted infection (STI). The government's HIV curriculum, which stresses abstinence until marriage, does not reduce pregnancy or STI. Both programs combined reduce STI more, but cut dropout and pregnancy less, than education subsidies alone. These results are inconsistent with a model of schooling and sexual behavior in which both pregnancy and STI are determined by one factor (unprotected sex), but consistent with a two-factor model in which choices between committed and casual relationships also affect these outcomes.
A study was conducted to determine heterogeneous effects of conditional cash transfers in Nicaragua. It was done with a unique data set from a social experiment in Nicaragua designed to evaluate a conditional cash transfer program targeted to poor rural households, the Red de Proteccion Social (RPS) or Social Safety Net. Compliance with program requirements was assured by not giving the transfer to beneficiaries if they failed to carry out the specified conditions. The estimates reveal that the positive program effect in per capita food expenditures and total per capita expenditures is smaller for households who are in the lower tail of the expenditure distribution. The estimates show that the households who had lower levels of food shares prior to the program were impacted more. Program effects are still positive for households with lower expenditures, though smaller than for households at the upper end of the distribution.
In this paper we investigate the role of expected returns to schooling and of perceived risks (of unemployment and earnings) as determinants of schooling decisions. Moreover, our data also allow us to analyze whether youths’ and/or mothers’ expectations predict schooling decisions, and whether this depends on the age and gender of the youth. In particular, we use Mexican data that contain labor market expectations of mothers and youths. We find that expected returns and risk perceptions are important determinants of schooling decisions, the latter in particular from the perspective of the mother. Boys’ expectations predict the decision to enter college, but not to enter high school. While girls’ own expectations do not predict either of the two educational decisions, mothers’ expectations are particularly strong predictors of their daughters’ decisions.
We extend the gym-attendance study of Charness and Gneezy (2009) by incentivizing subjects to attend the gym for a month, observing their pre- and post-treatment attendance relative to a control group, and eliciting subjects’ pre- and post-treatment predictions of their post-treatment attendance. We find a habit formation effect similar to that of Charness and Gneezy in the short-run, but with substantial decay caused by winter vacation. We additionally find that subjects seriously over-predict future attendance, which we interpret as evidence of partial naivete with respect to self-control problems. Subjects also appear to have biased beliefs about their future cost of gym attendance. Our design allows us to estimate the monetary value of habit formation—equivalent on average to a $0.40 per visit subsidy—as well as the welfare cost of present bias and naivete.
We look at the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Côte d'Ivoire and study to which extent cocoa producers' children suffered from this severe aggregate shock in terms of school enrollment, labor, height stature and morbidity. Using pre-crisis (1985-88) and post-crisis (1993) data, we propose a difference-in-difference strategy to identify the causal effect of the cocoa shock on child outcomes, whereby we compare children of cocoa-producing households and children of other farmers living in the same district or the same village. This causal effect is shown to be rather strong for the four child outcomes we examine. Hence human capital investments are definitely procyclical in this context. We also provide evidence of gender bias against young girls with respect to education and health care. We last argue that the difference-in-difference variations can be interpreted as private income effects, likely to derive from tight liquidity constraints.
The Honduran PRAF experiment randomly assigned conditional cash transfers to 40 of 70 poor municipalities, within five strata defined by a poverty proxy. Using census data, we show that eligible children were 8 percentage points more likely to enroll in school and 3 percentage points less likely to work. The effects were much larger in the two poorest strata, and statistically insignificant in the other three (the latter finding is robust to the use of a separate regression-discontinuity design). Heterogeneity confirms the importance of judicious targeting to maximize the impact and cost-effectiveness of CCTs. There is no consistent evidence of effects on ineligible children or on adult labor supply.
Using a student level randomization, we compare three education-based conditional cash transfers designs: a standard design, a design where part of the monthly transfers are postponed until children have to re-enroll in school, and a design that lowers the reward for attendance but incentivizes graduation and tertiary enrollment. The two nonstandard designs significantly increase enrollment rates at both the secondary and tertiary levels while delivering the same attendance gains as the standard design. Postponing some of the attendance transfers to the time of re-enrollment appears particularly effective for the most at-risk children. (JEL H23, I21, I22, J13, O15)
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs link public transfers to human capital investment in hopes of alleviating current poverty and reducing its intergenerational transmission. However, little is known about their long-term impacts. This paper evaluates longer-run impacts on schooling and work of the best-known CCT program, Mexico’s PROGRESA/Oportunidades, using experimental and nonexperimental estimators based on groups with different program exposure. The results show positive impacts on schooling, reductions in work for younger youth (consistent with postponing labor force entry), increases in work for older girls, and shifts from agricultural to nonagricultural employment. The evidence suggests schooling effects are robust with time.
This paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium model where inefficient child labor arises due to credit constraints. It derives a positive relationship between inequality in the distribution of income and the incidence of child labor. Looking at policy implications, it shows how trade sanctions against countries using child labor may fail to reduce the incidence of child labor. It discusses some alternative policies to reduce the incidence of child labor. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: J24; D60.
The question of how trade liberalization affects the employment of children in developing economies is at the core of the debate on globalization. Trade theory predicts that an increase in the price of an exported good could either increase or decrease child labor depending on the magnitudes of the substitution and income effects. In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the relative price of an exported commodity and child labor using household-level data from within a poor country. In particular, we relate child labor to regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice surrounding national and international rice market integration in Vietnam. We find that higher rice prices are associated with declines in child labor. Income effects play an important role in this relationship. Rice price increases are associated with the largest declines in child labor in households that are large net producers of rice. These findings show that greater market integration can be associated with less child labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of punitive trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labor is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.
Income shocks on poor households are known to induce parents to take their children out of school and send them to work when other risk-coping instruments are insufficient. State dependence in school attendance further implies that these responses to short-run shocks have long-term consequences on children's human capital development. Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, where the condition is on school attendance, have been shown to be effective in increasing educational achievements and reducing child work. We ask the question here of whether or not children who benefit from conditional transfers are protected from the impacts of shocks on school enrollment and work. We develop a model of a household's decision regarding child school and work under conditions of a school re-entry cost, conditional transfers, and exposure to shocks. We take model predictions to the data using a panel from Mexico's Progresa experience with randomized treatment. Results show that there is strong state dependence in school enrollment. We find that the conditional transfers helped protect enrollment, but did not refrain parents from increasing child work in response to shocks. These results reveal that CCT programs can provide an additional benefit to recipients in acting as safety nets for the schooling of the poor.
This paper examines the relationship between household income shocks and child labor. In particular, we investigate the extent to which transitory income shocks lead to increases in child labor and whether household asset holdings mitigate the effects of these shocks. Using data from a household panel survey in Tanzania, we find that both relationships are significant. We investigate mechanisms that could account for these results, including buffer stocks and borrowing. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Coca eradication and interdiction are the most common policies aimed at reducing the production and distribution of cocaine in the Andes, but little is know about their impact on households. This paper uses the shift in the production of coca leaves from Peru to Colombia in 1995 to analyze the indirect effects of the anti-coca policy on children's allocation of time. After different sensitivity checks, the results indicate that a decrease in coca production is associated with increases in work and hours children living in coca-growing states devote to work within and outside the household, with no effects on schooling outcomes. These findings suggest a previously undocumented indirect effect of drug policies on household behavior.
The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer program implemented in rural areas in Colombia since 2002, on school enrollment and child labor. Using a difference-in-difference framework, our results show that the program increased school participation of 14-17-year-old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points and had lower effects on the enrollment of younger children, in the region of 1-3 percentage points. The effects on work are largest in the relatively more urbanized parts of rural areas and particularly for younger children, whose participation in domestic work decreased by around 13 percentage points after the program, as compared to a decrease of 10 percentage points for older children in these same areas. The program had no discernible impacts on children's work in more rural areas. Participation in income-generating work remained largely unaffected by the program. We also find evidence of school and work time not being fully substitutable, suggesting that some, but not all, of the increased time at school may be drawn from children's leisure time. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..
This paper identifies neighborhood peer effects on children's school enrollment decisions using experimental evidence from the Mexican PROGRESA program. We use exogenous variation in the school participation of program-eligible children to identify peer effects on the schooling decisions of ineligible children residing in treatment communities. We find that peers have considerable influence on the enrollment decisions of program-ineligible children, and these effects are concentrated among children from poorer households. These findings imply that policies aimed at encouraging enrollment can produce large social multiplier effects. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Can incentives be effective when trying to encourage the development of good habits? We investigate the effect of paying people a non-trivial amount of money to attend an exercise facility a number of times during a one-month period. In two separate studies, we find that doing so leads to a large and significant increase in the average post-intervention attendance level relative to the control group. This result is entirely driven by the impact on people who did not previously attend the gym on a regular basis, as the average attendance rates for people who had already been using the gym regularly are either unchanged or diminished. In our second study, we also obtain biometric evidence that this intervention improves important health indicators such as weight, waist size, and pulse rate. Thus, even though personal incentives to exercise are already in place, it appears that providing financial incentive to attend the gym regularly for a month serves as a catalyst to get some people past the threshold of actually getting started with an exercise regimen. We argue that there is scope for financial intervention in habit formation, particularly in the area of health.
We exploit the unique experimental design of a social program to understand how cash
transfers to eligible households indirectly affect the consumption of ineligible households living in the same villages. This indirect effect on consumption is positive, and it operates through insurance and credit markets: ineligible households benefit from their neighbors???higher income by receiving more transfers, by borrowing more, and by reducing their precautionary savings. This exercise shows 1) how social programs may benefit the local economy at large, not only the treated; 2) how this beneficial effect is spread in the locality through informal credit and insurance arrangements; 3) how looking only at the effect on the treated
results in an underestimation of the program impact. One should analyze the effects of this type of program on the entire local economy, rather than on the treated only, and use a village-level randomization, rather than selecting treatment and control subjects from the same community.
We build a model of child labor and study its implications for welfare. We assume that there is a trade-off between child labor and the accumulation of human capital. Even if parents are altruistic and child labor is socially inefficient, it may arise in equilibrium because parents fail to fully internalize its negative effects. This occurs when bequests are zero or when capital markets are imperfect. We also study the effects of a simple ban on child labor and derive conditions under which it may be Pareto improving in general equilibrium. We show that the implications of child labor for fertility are ambiguous.
We develop a model in which some child labor is exploitative. Since exploited child laborers are paid less than the value
of the marginal product of labor, there is scope for policy intervention to be Pareto improving. We illustrate this by showing
that a system of inspection and fines targeted on exploitative child labor increases the aggregate output produced by children.
We also establish that such intervention secures the release of children from exploitative working conditions, to their benefit.
The distributional implications of the intervention among employers and among children who had not been exploited depends
on whether capital is mobile internationally, and can depend on whether the elimination of exploitative child labor is partial
or complete.
Conditional transfer programs are becoming a common approach to influence household decisions. The evidence to date is that these programs are good at promoting certain outcomes such as school attendance, but that other outcomes such as reducing child labor are more difficult to achieve. This study examines the impact of Superémonos, a conditional transfer program in Costa Rica, which provides poor families with a subsidy for the purchase of food conditional upon children regularly attending school. Using three different empirical techniques—simple comparison of mean outcomes, regression analysis and propensity score matching—we examine the program’s impact on school attendance, performance in school and child labor. We find strong evidence that the program achieves its goal of improving school attendance and much weaker evidence regarding school performance. The program does not reduce the likelihood that youth will work. These findings are discussed in the context of the results from impact evaluations of other conditional transfer programs.
This paper uses longitudinal employment survey data to analyze the impact of household economic shocks on the schooling and employment transitions of young people in metropolitan Brazil. The paper uses data on over 100,000 children ages 10-16 from Brazil's Monthly Employment Survey (PME) from 1982 to 1999. Taking advantage of the rotating panels in the PME, we compare households in which the male household head becomes unemployed during a four-month period with households in which the head is continuously employed. Probit regressions indicate that an unemployment shock significantly increases the probability that a child enters the labor force, drops out of school, and fails to advance in school. The effects can be large, implying increases of as much as 50% in the probability of entering employment for 16-year-old girls. In contrast, shocks occurring after the school year do not have significant effects, suggesting that these results are not due to unobserved characteristics of households that experience unemployment shocks. The results suggest that some households are not able to absorb short-run economic shocks, with negative consequences for children.
We develop a model in which some child labor is exploitative. Since exploited child laborers are paid less than the value of the marginal product of labor, there is scope for policy intervention to be Pareto improving. We illustrate this by showing that a system of inspection and fines targeted on exploitative child labor increases the aggregate output produced by children. We also establish that such intervention secures the release of children from exploitative working conditions, to their benefit. The distributional implications of the intervention among employers and among children who had not been exploited depends on whether capital is mobile internationally, and can depend on whether the elimination of exploitative child labor is partial or complete. Copyright 2008 , Oxford University Press.
This paper explores the link between financial market incompleteness and human capital accumulation. We examine how child
school attendance responds to seasonal fluctuations in the income of agrarian households using panel data from rural India.
To pinpoint market imperfections, we study responses to aggregate and idiosyncratic, as well as to anticipated and unanticipated,
income shocks. Our main finding is that seasonal fluctuations in school attendance are a form of self-insurance, but one which
does not result in a substantial loss of human capital on average.
This paper investigates whether government transfer programs displace or ‘crowd out’ private support, focusing on a large increase in state old age pensions in South Africa. Using data spanning the period of the expansion, we find that each rand of public pension income to the elderly leads to a 0.25–0.30 rand reduction in private transfers from children living away from home. However, despite the large increase in income, there were no significant changes in migration, labor supply or household composition. We also show that evaluations of the distributional effects of the pension are overstated when crowding out is ignored.
Although intuitive and morally compelling, a ban on the worst forms of child labour in poor countries is unlikely to be welfare improving. We show that harmful forms of child labour have an economic role: by maintaining wages for child labour high enough, they allow human capital accumulation in poor countries. Unless appropriate mechanisms are designed to mitigate the decline in child labour wages caused by reduced employment options for children, a ban on harmful forms of child labour will likely prove undesirable. We perform our analysis within a simple model of parental investment in children's education. Copyright 2005 Royal Economic Society.
This paper analyses the effect of child labor on household labor supply using 1920 US Census micro data. The aim of the analysis is to understand who in the household benefits from child labor. In order to identify a source of exogenous variation in child labor I use State-specific child labor laws. I find that a rise in the proportion of working children by household is associated with no variation in parents¿ labor supply. I also find a strong negative externality among children: as the proportion of working children by household rises, everything else equal, the probability that each child works falls while the probability that he attends school rises. This suggests that parents redistribute entirely the returns from child labor to the children in the household, consistent with a model of household labor supply with fully altruistic parents.
If child labor as a mass phenomenon occurs not because of parental selfishness but because of the parents' concern for the household's survival, the popular argument for banning child labor loses much of its force. However, this assumption about parental decision making, coupled with the assumption of substitutability in production between child and adult labor, could result in multiple equilibria in the labor market, with one equilibrium where children work and another where adult wage is high and children do not work. The paper establishes this result and discusses its policy implications. Copyright 1998 by American Economic Association.
This paper exploits the variation in the legal minimum working age across states in 1920 America in order to identify households' labor supply responses to exogenous changes in children's labor force participation. Using micro data on urban households from the U.S. Census, I find evidence that as a child moves to the labor market his siblings are less likely to work and more likely to attend school. I find no significant effect on parents' labor supply. (JEL J13, J22, K31, N32)