The Consequences of Child Labor : Evidence from Longitudinal Data in Rural Tanzania
This paper exploits a unique longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the consequences of child labor on education, employment choices, and marital status over a 10-year horizon. Shocks to crop production and rainfall are used as instrumental...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/07/9698636/consequences-child-labor-evidence-longitudinal-data-rural-tanzania http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6822 |
| Summary: | This paper exploits a unique
longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the
consequences of child labor on education, employment
choices, and marital status over a 10-year horizon. Shocks
to crop production and rainfall are used as instrumental
variables for child labor. For boys, the findings show that
a one-standard-deviation (5.7 hour) increase in child labor
leads 10 years later to a loss of approximately one year of
schooling and to a substantial increase in the likelihood of
farming and of marrying at a younger age. Strikingly, there
are no significant effects on education for girls, but there
is a significant increase in the likelihood of marrying
young. The findings also show that crop shocks lead to an
increase in agricultural work for boys and instead lead to
an increase in chore hours for girls. The results are
consistent with education being a lower priority for girls
and/or with chores causing less disruption for education
than agricultural work. The increased chore hours could also
account for the results on marriage for girls. |
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