The Spillovers of Employment Guarantee Programs on Child Labor and Education
Many developing countries use employment guarantee programs to combat poverty. This paper examines the consequences of such employment guarantee programs for the human capital accumulation of children. It exploits the phased roll-out of India'...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/891701578410026037/The-Spillovers-of-Employment-Guarantee-Programs-on-Child-Labor-and-Education http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33155 |
| Summary: | Many developing countries use employment
guarantee programs to combat poverty. This paper examines
the consequences of such employment guarantee programs for
the human capital accumulation of children. It exploits the
phased roll-out of India's flagship Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) to
study the effects on enrollment in schools and child labor.
Introduction of MGNREGA results in lower relative school
enrollment in treated districts. The authors find that the
drop in enrollment is driven by primary school children.
Children in higher grades are just as likely to attend
school under MGNREGA, but their school performance
deteriorates. Using nationally representative employment
data, they find evidence indicating an increase in child
labor highlighting the unintentional perverse effects of the
employment guarantee schemes for Human capital. |
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