Niels-Hugo Blunch

Revisiting the Link Between Poverty and Child Labor: The Ghanaian Experience

The link between poverty, and child labor has traditionally been regarded as well established. But recent research has questioned the validity of this link, claiming that poverty is not a main determinant of child labor. Starting from the premise that child labor is not necessarily harmful, the authors analyze the determinants of harmful child labor, viewed as child labor that directly conflicts with childrens accumulation of human capital, in an effort to identify the most vulnerable groups. Identifying these groups might enable policymakers to take appropriate action. The authors estimate the positive relationship between poverty, and child labor. Moreover, they find evidence of a gender gap in child labor, linked to poverty. Girls as a group (as well as across urban, rural, and poverty sub-samples) are consistently found to be more likely to engage in harmful child labor, than boys. This gender gap may reflect cultural norms (an issue that calls for further research). The incidence of child labor increases with age, especially for girls. In Ghana, there are structural differences - across gender, between rural and urban locations, and across poverty quintiles of households - in the processes underlying child labor.

Literacy, Skills, and Welfare: Effects of Participation in Adult Literacy Programs

This paper examines the effect of adult literacy program participation on household consumption in Ghana. The adult literacy programs in Ghana are of special interest because they are more comprehensive than standard literacy programs and incorporate many additional topics. We use community fixed effects combined with instrumental variables to account for possible endogenous program placement and self-selection into program participation. For households where none of the adults have completed any formal education we find a substantial, positive, and statistically significant effect on household consumption. Our preferred estimate of the effect of participation for households without education is equivalent to a 10% increase in consumption per adult equivalent. The effects of participation on welfare for other households are smaller, not statistically significant, and become smaller the more educated the household is. We find positive and statistically significant effects of participation on literacy and numeracy rates, although the increases are too small to be the only explanation for the welfare effects. There is also evidence that participants are more likely to engage in market activities and to sell a variety of agricultural goods. Taking account of both direct cost and opportunity cost, we argue that the social returns of adult literacy programs are substantial.

Enterprise-Level Training in Developing Countries: Do International Standards Matter?

Several studies have examined the determinants of training in developing countries but few have paid attention to the potential importance of international standards such as ISO 9000 or ISO 14000 on the firms training decision. This article examines training determinants using recent employer surveys for five developing countries: Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, Morocco and Nicaragua. It finds that ISO certification status is an important determinant of training, even after controlling for other characteristics such as workers formal schooling, firm size, industry and foreign ownership. This points toward the importance of international standards, including product quality and production standards, for firm training. The article also discusses policy implications related to the findings and provides directions for further research.

Changing Norms About Gender Inequality in Education: Evidence from Bangladesh

Using a recent household survey for two cohorts of married women, this paper examines norms about gender equality in education for children and adults. Among the main findings are that gender education gap norms have changed: younger generations of women are more positive about female vs. male education, both as pertaining to child and adult education outcomes. Perhaps the strongest result is that Bangladeshi women are more likely to espouse attitudes of gender equality in education for their children and less so about gender equality among spouses. It is also easier to explain norms regarding childrens education and more difficult to explain norms about equality in marriages. The authors believe that question on relative education of boys and girls captures the value of education per se, while the question on educational equality in marriage captures the norms regarding marriage and the relative worth of husbands and wives. The effect of education in determining norms is significant though complex, and spans own and spousal education, as well as that of older females in the household. This indicates sharing of education norms effects or externalities arising from spousal education in the production of gender education gap norms within marriage as well as arising from the presence of older educated females in the household. Lastly, the authors also find associations between gender education gap norms and household poverty, information processing and religion, though the evidence here is more mixed.

Context-rich Problems in Economics

Teaching Innovations in Economics presents findings from the Teaching Innovations Program (TIP) funded by the National Science Foundation. The six-year project engaged economics professors in the use of interactive teaching in undergraduate economics courses. Each chapter offers an insightful explanation of an innovative teaching strategy and provides a description and examples of its effective use in undergraduate economics courses. The book’s conclusion assesses the results from an evaluation of the program that reports detailed findings on how TIP fundamentals have contributed to faculty development and successful outcomes.

Religion and Human Capital in Ghana

This paper examines the religion-human capital link, examining a recent household survey for Ghana. Insights from the recent anthropological literature leads to a prediction of Islam being associated with lower human capital levels than Christianity, since Islam, perhaps surprisingly, may be clustered together with Traditional/Animist religion within the group of orally based religions for the case of Ghana. While previous studies typically have only considered the main religions, thereby not allowing for heterogeneous associations in the links at the sub-group level, and also have not allowed religious affiliation to be endogenously determined, these possibilities are explored here, as well. I find a strong association between individual religious affiliation and human capital as measured by years of schooling, with Christians as a group being more literate and having completed more years of schooling than Muslims and Animists / Traditionalists, thus confirming the predictions from the conceptual framework. At the same time, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the strength of this relationship within different types of Christianity. The instrumental variables estimation strategy proves to be preferable to OLS, while at the same yielding higher associations in the religion-human capital relations ship. In turn, this indicates that previous studies, which have typically used OLS, may have systematically underestimated the strength of the religion-human capital link. Directions for future research are also presented.

Children's Work and School Attendance in Ghana

Most of the empirical literature on child labor considers work per se, independent of the nature or extent of work. This study fills this void by examining child work that directly conflicts with the schooling of children in Ghana. It finds evidence of a cultural bias in the way questions regarding working status are perceived. Additionally, the study addresses shortcomings of the empirical analyses of previous studies related to collapsibility, spatial heterogeneity and specification testing. While a substantial share of children who work rather than attend school are forced away from schooling by poverty, an alarmingly high share report that school is “useless” or “uninteresting.” This should be of concern to policymakers. Eradicating poverty is not enough to “send children back to school” – norms, traditions, and perceptions must be changed, as well.

Literacy and Numeracy Skills and Education Sector Reform: Evidence from Ghana.

Several African countries instituted education reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, there is only little evidence on the effectiveness of these programs. Additionally, most previous studies of the determinants of literacy and numeracy have considered the proficiency in only one language and, possibly, numeracy. This paper examines both of these issues for the case of Ghana, analyzing the trends in and determinants of four different literacy skills and numeracy. A comparison of outcomes before and after the 1987 Education Sector Reform indicates that literacy and numeracy skills levels increased following the Reform, and more so for English literacy skills than for Ghanaian literacy skills, thus confirming prior expectations. The results from linear probability models of literacy and numeracy outcomes indicate that, consistent with the objective of the Reform, the productivity of primary education in terms of literacy and numeracy increased, while the productivity of other levels of education remained constant or decreased. Additionally, the results highlight the importance of school quality and other community level factors in the creation of literacy and numeracy and therefore also the importance of incorporating these factors in empirical analyses. The results indicate that the focus of the 1987 Education Sector Reform might have been too narrow, so that future education policy in Ghana may want to focus on strengthening the quality of education above the primary level, also.

A Teenager in Love: Multidimensional Human Capital and Teenage Pregnancy in Ghana

Abstract I examine teenage pregnancy in Ghana, focusing on the role and interplay of Ghanaian and English reading skills, formal educational attainment, and adult literacy programme participation. Pursuing several alternative identification strategies three main results are established. First, I confirm the finding from previous studies that educational attainment is negatively related to teenage pregnancy. Second, however, once Ghanaian and English reading skills are introduced, the association between educational attainment and teenage pregnancy decreases or disappears altogether. Third, for the girls who have not completed primary school, adult literacy programme participation is associated with a much lower probability of experiencing a teenage pregnancy. A bright future is the best contraceptive. –Marian Wright Edelman

Income Convergence and the Flow Out of Poverty in India, 1994-2005

This paper explores the dynamics of income and poverty of rural Indian households, 1994-2005. The estimation strategy consists of convergence analysis to test whether poor households are catching-up in terms of income, followed by transition analysis to test whether poor households are more likely to exit poverty than to remain poor. The identification strategy explicitly addresses issues pertaining to the potential endogeneity and measurement error of initial income and poverty. We find evidence of income convergence and a higher probability of exiting poverty than of remaining poor. The key variables driving these results are education, occupation and asset ownership.