Lorenzo Guarcello

Child Labour and Education For All: An Issue Paper

Education is a key element in the prevention of child labor; at the same time, child labor is one of the main obstacles to Education for All (EFA). Understanding the interplay between education and child labor is therefore critical to achieving both EFA and child labor elimination goals. This paper forms part of Understanding Children Work (UCW) broader efforts towards improving this understanding of education-child labor links, providing a brief overview of relevant research and key knowledge gaps. The study largely confirms the conventional wisdom that child labor harms childrens ability to enter and survive in the school system, and makes it more difficult for children to derive educational benefit from schooling once in the system. The evidence also suggested that these negative effects are not limited to economic activity but also extend to household chores, and that the intensity of work (in economic activity or household chores) is particularly important in determining the impact of work on schooling. As regards the link between education provision and child labor, it pointed to the important role of inadequate schooling in keeping children out of the classroom and into work. This evidence indicated that both the school quality and school access can play an important role in household decisions concerning whether children study or work.

Does School Quality Matter for Working Children

This paper aims to begin to fill in the gap about the possible role of school quality in affecting household decisions relative to children’s work and school attendance. While from a theoretical point of view, we would expect school quality to be an important determinant of household decisions, as it influences expected return to education, there is almost no empirical evidence available on the matter. We first review evidence based on cross country data to assess whether some clear stylized fact can be identified: cross country data show that children’s work and school attendance are negatively (positively) correlated to a few of the available school indicators. Subsequently, we use micro data for Yemen (YNPS, 1999 and Yemen School Based Survey, 1999/2000) and Cambodia (CSES and EMIS, 2003/204) to identify the effects of school quality on school attendance and children’s work, and results become more definitive. Our finding suggest that school quality matters for working children: better schools do reduce participation to economic activities and increase school attendance.

Children's work in Andhra Pradesh : trends and determinants

The study assesses trends in childrens involvement in employment and schooling in Andhra Pradesh over the eleven-year period from 1994 to 2005. Considerable progress was made in getting children out of employment and into school over this 11-year period: childrens involvement in employment declined by more than 50 per cent, by 9 percentage points, while childrens school attendance rose by 22 percentage points. The factors contributing to the fall in childrens employment and the rise in school attendance differ considerably between the urban and rural contexts. In cities and towns, the changes were driven mainly by changes in living standards and in local labour demand. Improved access to school, by contrast, seems to have been the primary driving force behind the large reduction in childrens employment in rural areas. The policy implications of these results are clear. In urban areas support to the living standards of the vulnerable groups is essential. At the same time, through appropriate measures aiming of increasing the returns to education, more attention should be paid to preventing children from premature involvement in the labour market in periods of high labour demand. In rural areas, ensuring childrens access to quality schools seems to be the highest priority, especially if accompanied by protection measures for the most vulnerable.