Impact of child labour on school attendance and school attainment: evidence from Bangladesh

Impact of child labour on school attendance and school attainment: evidence from Bangladesh

This paper uses data from Bangladesh to examine household decisions involving child schooling and child labour. Using Multinomial logit model, we first estimate the determinants of household's decision to put a child in one of the four states - 'schooling''working', 'combining schooling and work', or doing nothing for 5-17 year old children. The paper then looks at the impact of work on child's current school attendance and school attainment using logit model. Multinomial logit results show that the education of parents significantly increases the probability that a school-age child will specialise in study. Empirical results further show that if the father is employed in a vulnerable occupation, for example, day-labour or wage-labour, it raises the probability that a child will work full time or combine work and study. The presence of very young children (ages 0-4) in the household increases the likelihood that a school-age (5-17) child will combine study with work. The significant and positive gender coefficient suggests that girls are more likely than boys to combine schooling with work. However, the central message from this study is that child labour adversely affects the child's schooling, which is reflected in lower school attendance and lower grade attainment. School attendance suffers most compared to grade attainment. The gender-disaggregated estimates confirm that work has much devastating effect on current school attendance and grade attainment of girls than that of boys.

No evidence of copyright restrictions on web site.