Determinants of Child Labor and School Attendance: The Role of Household Unobservables

Understanding Children's Work Programme Working Paper, December 2002

28 Pages Posted: 7 Mar 2011 Last revised: 8 Mar 2011

See all articles by Partha Deb

Partha Deb

City University of New York, CUNY Hunter College - Department of Economics

Furio C. Rosati

University of Rome Tor Vergata - Faculty of Economics

Date Written: December 2002

Abstract

We develop a semi-parametric latent class random effects multinomial logit model to distinguish between observed and unobserved household characteristics as determinants of child labor, school attendance and idleness. We find that much of the substitution between activities as a response to changes in covariates is between attending school and being idle, with work being rather resistant. Unobserved household heterogeneity is substantial and swamps observed income and wealth heterogeneity. A characterization of households into latent types reveals very different instrinsic propensities towards the three children’s activities and that households with a high propensity to send their children to school are poorer and have less educated parents compared to households in the other classes.

Keywords: child labour, education, household unobservables, poverty

JEL Classification: J13, R2, I30

Suggested Citation

Deb, Partha and Rosati, Furio C., Determinants of Child Labor and School Attendance: The Role of Household Unobservables (December 2002). Understanding Children's Work Programme Working Paper, December 2002, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1780309 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1780309

Partha Deb (Contact Author)

City University of New York, CUNY Hunter College - Department of Economics ( email )

695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
United States

Furio C. Rosati

University of Rome Tor Vergata - Faculty of Economics ( email )

Via Columbia n.2
Rome, rome 00100
Italy
6 2020 500 (Fax)

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
307
Abstract Views
2,014
Rank
197,346
PlumX Metrics