Child labour or school attendance? Evidence from Zambia

In this paper we investigate what affects school attendance and child labour in an LDC, using data for Zambia. Since the data comes from a household survey with information on all household members it allows us to take account of unobserved household effects by introducing household-specific effects in a logit model. The empirical analysis suggests that both economic and sociological variables are important determinants for the choice between school attendance and child labour. In particular, we find some support for the hypothesis that poverty forces households to keep their children away from school. JEL classification: J24, I21, O15 Received May 20, 1996/Accepted January 2, 1997     

Child labor and the division of labor in the early English cotton mills

The share of children employed in English cotton factories fell significantly before the introduction of effective child labor legislation in the early 1830s. The early factories employed predominantly children because adults without factory experience were relatively unproductive factory workers. The subsequent growth of the cotton industry fostered the development of a labor market for productive adult factory workers. This effect helps account for the shift toward adults in the cotton factory workforce. JEL classification: J13, N33, O14 Received November 3, 1995/Accepted September 20, 1996     

Family size,schooling and child labor in Peru -- an empirical analysis

This paper analyzes the effects of being indigenous, number of siblings, sibling activities and sibling age structure on child schooling progress and child non-school activity. The analysis is based on the Peru 1991 Living Standards Survey. The analysis shows that family size is important. However, the analysis also demonstrates the importance of taking into consideration the activities of siblings. The number of siblings not entrolled in school proves to be an important control variable in at least one specification of the empirical model. However, more research is needed on the interactions between siblings, their activities and their age structure. In other words, an attempt must be made to find ways of taking into account the “life cycle effects” of one‘s siblings on their schooling performance and labor force activity. The analysis also shows that the age structure of siblings is important, but in conjunction with their activities. That is, having a greater number of younger siblings implies less schooling, more age-grade distortion in the classroom and more child labor. JEL classification: J22, J23, I21 Received August 1, 1996 / Accepted February 21, 1997     

Family size and children’s education in Vietnam

Data from the nationally representative 1994 Inter-Censal Demographic Survey are used to examine the association between family size and children s schooling in Vietnam. The data provide information on several education measures for all children over age 10, including children no longer residing in the household. Although a clear inverse bivariate association between family size and children s school attendance and educational attainment is evident, multivariate analysis controlling for urban/rural residence, region, parents’ education, household wealth, and child’s age, reveals that much of this association, especially that predicting educational attainment, is attributable to these other influences. Moreover, much of the effect that remains after statistical adjustment for the other influences is seen mainly at the largest family sizes. We consider the implications of these findings for current population policy in Vietnam and the possible features of the Vietnamese context that might account for the modest association.     

Poverty in the Philippines: the impact of family size

The people of Asia are beginning to realize that lower fertility translates into increased family wealth and educational attainment. This is the message that population and development efforts have been focusing on. In the Philippines, the goal is to lower fertility with a strategy based on the assumption that increased capacity of the economy will support a growing population at a higher standard of living. In the Philippines, over 33% of the households have 7 or more family members, while 20% of urban and 27% of rural households have 4 or more. The risk of poverty associated with increased number of children are 44-50% for 1 child and 60-78% for those with 5. Households spend up to 10% of their total income to raise 1 child, 18% for 2, and 26% for 4 children. Because many families lack the resources to raise children the per child share drops dramatically with each child, a household with 4 children spends 25% less per child than does 1 with 2 children. Occupation also affects income as the highest poverty rates are among heads of household who are: laborers (60%) and agricultural workers (73%). The best solution is an integrated approach with increases in family planning, education, and agricultural reform.     

Family size and children’s education in Thailand: Evidence from a national sample

Analysis of a large, nationally representative survey shows that family size exerts a substantial negative influence on the probability that a child will attend secondary school in Thailand. The primary mechanism underlying this effect is most likely the dilution of familial resources available per child associated with larger numbers of children. The extent and the level of schooling at which this effect operates vary with the household level of wealth and with rural or urban residence. Because fertility decline is leading to a major increase in the proportion of children who come from small families, falling birth rates contribute to increasing educational attainment in Thailand.     

Nature’s Experiment? Handedness and Early Childhood Development

In recent years, a large body of research has investigated the various factors affecting child development and the consequent impact of child development on future educational and labor market outcomes. In this article, we contribute to this literature by investigating the effect of handedness on child development. This is an important issue given that around 10% of the world’s population is left-handed and given recent research demonstrating that child development strongly affects adult outcomes. Using a large, nationally representative sample of young children, we find that the probability of a child being left-handed is not significantly related to child health at birth, family composition, parental employment, or household income. We also find robust evidence that left-handed (and mixed-handed) children perform significantly worse in nearly all measures of development than right-handed children, with the relative disadvantage being larger for boys than girls. Importantly, these differentials cannot be explained by different socioeconomic characteristics of the household, parental attitudes, or investments in learning resources.     

Educational attainment of children from single-parent families: Differences by exposure,gender, and race

This article examines the effect of living in a single-parent family on educational attainment by gender and race. According to household production theory, the reduction in parental resources for human capital investment in children living in a single-parent family should lower their educational attainment. Using matched mother-daughter and mother-son samples from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we constructed precise measures of the age and length of time a child lived in a single-parent family. Empirical findings show that the negative effect of living in a single-parent family (1) increases with the number of years spent in this type of family, (2) is greatest during the preschool years, and (3) is larger for boys than girls.     

The effect of child care and part time opportunities on participation and fertility decisions in Italy

Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, low labor market participation rates of married women are observed together with low birth rates. Our explanation involves the Italian institutional structure, particularly as reflected in rigidities and imperfections in the labor market and characteristics of the publicly-funded child care system. These rigidities tend to simultaneously increase the costs of having children and to discourage the labor market participation of married women. We analyze a model of labor supply and fertility, using panel data. The empirical results show that the availability of child care and part time work increase both the probability of working and having a child. Received: 14 February 2000/Accepted: 20 February 2001     

Growing up with single mothers: Occupational attainment of daughters in the early 20th century

Growing up in female-headed households has long been considered disadvantageous for children. We examine the relationship between family structure and occupational attainment in 1920, accounting for selection into the labor force. The results indicate that the attainment of daughters in mother-headed households was not significantly lower than that of their counterparts in male-headed households. Mothers’ resources alleviate some of the disadvantage experienced by working daughters. Family size and ethnicity are strongly associated with daughters’ occupational attainment, regardless of the household head's sex. The results suggest that prevailing gender norms restricted the jobs available to women in the early 20th century, regardless of their family type.     

Who gets over the training hurdle? A study of the training experiences of young men and women in Britain

Using longitudinal data from the British National Child Development Study, this paper examines gender differences in the determinants of work-related training. The analysis covers a crucial decade in the working lives of this 1958 birth cohort of young men and women – the years spanning the ages of 23 to 33. Hurdle negative binomial models are used to estimate the number of work-related training events lasting at least three days. This approach takes into account the fact that more than half the men and two thirds of the women in the sample experienced no work-related training lasting three or more days over the period 1981 to 1991. Our analysis suggests that reliance on work-related training to improve the skills of the work force will result in an increase in the skills of the already educated, but will not improve the skills of individuals entering the labor market with relatively low levels of education. JEL classification: C25, I21, J24. Received February 9, 1996/Accepted August 14, 1996     

Landholding and Fertility: A Rejoinder

In this paper the relative time cost of children compared to other types of household tasks, and the relative time cost of producing quantity rather than quality of children is examined. These propositions lie at the heart of much of the literature on the economics of fertility, but they have rarely been examined directly. We employ household time-use data from a study of a large metropolitan area in the United States. Our results cast doubt on the notions that: (a) child-services are more time-costly than other household tasks; (b) that quantity of child-services is more time-costly than quality of child-services. Moreover, there appear to be strong complementarities between child-services and other household tasks, and time spent on child care does not seem to act as an obstacle to working outside the home. Finally, we suggest another economic interpretation of the fertility transition centred not on changes in objective factors exogeneous to the household, but, instead, on the internal economic power structure of the household itself.     

Preference for Boys,Family Size,and Educational Attainment in India

Using data from nationally representative household surveys, we test whether Indian parents make trade-offs between the number of children and investments in education. To address the endogeneity due to the joint determination of quantity and quality of children, we instrument family size with the gender of the first child, which is plausibly random. Given a strong son preference in India, parents tend to have more children if the firstborn is a girl. Our instrumental variable results show that children from larger families have lower educational attainment and are less likely to be enrolled in school, with larger effects for rural, poorer, and low-caste families as well as for families with illiterate mothers.     

What can child care do for human capital?

This study reviews the evidence on the possible contribution that a publicly supported child care program could make to the stock of human capital that future generations will bring into the nation's labor force, focusing on the development of children most at risk of future poverty and dependency.The analysis first discusses the potential benefits to individuals, and to society at large, of increased human capital investment. Next, evidence is reviewed on how pre-school programs have affected educational attainment. The link between educational attainment and earning capacity is then examined using evidence drawn from census surveys as well as a limited amount from longitudinal studies of pre-school alumni. In conclusion the evidence supports the claim that investment in child care, incorporating tested developmental components, can yield net benefits to society by enhancing the human capital of upcoming generations.     

Household vulnerability and child labor: the effect of shocks,credit rationing,and insurance

In this paper, we use a unique data set for Guatemala to estimate the effect of idiosyncratic shocks and credit constrains on children’s labor supply and schooling decisions. We extend Rosenbaum and Rubin (J R Stat Soc B 45:212–218, 1983b) analysis to the case of a multinomial outcome by proposing an innovative sensitivity analysis to assess the robustness of the estimates with respect to the presence of unobservables. The results show that credit rationing is an important determinant of school enrollment and children’s work. Exposure to negative shocks also strongly influences household decisions and pushes children to work, while access to coping mechanisms, like insurance, tends to increase education and to reduce child labor.     

Demographic composition of farm households and its effect on time allocation

The decisions of farmers to work on or off the farm depend in part on household composition and the participation patterns of other family members. This is because of the differential income effects resulting from the household's joint budget constraint and the time and money costs imposed by different household members, and because of the substitutability or complementarity between the farm labor inputs of different household members. This paper demonstrates this point by estimating a joint labor participation model of farm operators and their spouses, in which participation decisions are conditioned on household composition. The model is estimated as a multivariate probit model with fixed effects, by quasi maximum likelihood methods. The results are consistent with the hypotheses that the time costs imposed on the household by small children are larger than the money costs; that the relative importance of time costs is decreasing as children grow up; and that the farm labor inputs of older children are complements to the couple's farm labor inputs but those of prime-age adults are substitutes. JEL classification: J22, J43An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 meeting of the European Society for Population Economics, Tilburg, The Netherlands. This research relies in part on my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago. I am grateful to Gary Becker, Joe Hotz, Yair Mundlak, Kevin Murphy, and Yoram Weiss for their useful suggestions and guidance. The research was completed while I was visiting at the University of Maryland. I thank the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station for financial support. Specific constructive comments were also made by Paul Schultz, John Ermisch, and anonymous referees. Finally, I express my gratitude to the staff of the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel, especially Haim Regev and Meir Rothchild, for providing the data used here. Responsibility for the contents of this paper remains exclusively mine.Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch     

Household and Context Determinants of Child Labor in 221 Districts of 18 Developing Countries

We develop a new theoretical framework that explains the engagement in child labor of children in developing countries. This framework distinguishes three levels (household, district and nation) and three groups of explanatory variables: Resources, Structure and Culture. Each of the three groups refers to another strand of the literature; economics, sociology and anthropology. The framework is tested by applying multilevel analysis on data for 239,120 children living in 221 districts of 18 developing countries. This approach allows us to simultaneously investigate effects of household and context factors. At the household level, we find that resources and structural characteristics influence child labor, whereas cultural characteristics have no effect. With regard to context factors, we find that children work more in rural areas, especially if there are more unskilled manual jobs, and in more traditional urban areas. In more developed regions, girls tend to work significantly less.     

Advice from working women with retired partners

ABSTRACT

In the 21st century, as more women are employed full-time and couples increasingly share egalitarian values, more women continue employment after their partners have voluntarily retired. However, we know very little about the experiences of this growing population of women. We asked working women with retired partners to share their advice for other women who may face this developmental transition. Open-ended responses from 97 women were analyzed to identify pertinent issues and themes. Four primary content areas were identified: time management, division of household labor, financial planning, and communication. Communication between partners was both a topic of concern as well as the solution suggested to resolve conflicts or differences that may arise when women live with a retired partner. It is expected that future changes in the workforce and improvements in the gender balance within relationships will continue to impact experiences for working women with retired partners.     

Child Well-being in Flanders: A Multidimensional Account

In this article we characterise the well-being of young children in the Belgian region of Flanders. We focus on three commonly used indicators: educational attainment, the existence of special needs and the occurrence of problematic behaviour. The former derives from a relatively impartial source, the schooling system, while the latter two originate from parental assessment. Somewhat surprisingly, the different measures are only weakly associated with each other. Moreover, negative outcomes tend to correlate with different characteristics of the child and the household, depending on the well-being indicator used. Only a low level of education of the mother and the fact the child is living in a single parent family is consistently associated with negative outcomes. This is not true, however, for a whole range of other characteristics, like the work schedule of the parents, the sex of the child, the child’s rank in the line of siblings or the number of children in the household. Consequently, policy makers should be wary of quick conclusions when presented with results from single indicator research. Educational lagging, for example, may seem a very objective measure of problems, yet it does not necessarily coincide with problematic behaviour nor a parental perception of special needs. Hence, political action is not self-evident and may require additional justification. For future research, a more thorough investigation about the links between the various indicators of child well-being seems indicated.

Determinants of Educational Attainment in Rural Thailand: A Life Course Approach

Using data from rural Thailand, we examine the determinants of educational attainment of school-age children. We organize our analysis around three central principles of the life course perspective: the embeddedness of lives in historical time and place, linked or interconnected lives, and the timing of lives. We examine these principles using comparisons within cohorts and between cohorts. We find that educational attainment is related to a combination of factors related to each of these principles. Specifically, despite a serious economic downturn occurring midway through our study, we nonetheless found that educational levels were higher following the downturn than preceding it. Interconnections to parents and siblings also affected educational outcomes, as did the timing of life events such as migration, marriage, and childbearing. For the latter, mother??s education and migration both positively affected educational attainment. For the former, having more siblings, both those in the household and those migrating, reduced education.