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