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Child Labour, Human Capital and Beliefs
Devis Decet, Kaman Lyu ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This paper looks at how rural households in Ghana decide whether children spend their time on school or on farm work. Parents weigh the income children bring in now against the future returns from education. The authors test whether parents also see farm work as an investment, because it builds agricultural skills that pay off later. They use four waves of survey data on 5,000 households, shocks to agricultural productivity, and a vignette survey to learn what parents believe. The abstract gives no results.
Key points
- In places where child labour is common, households trade off current returns from child labour against future returns from education.
- The paper tests for a third factor: future returns from child labour, because parents may see farm work as an investment in agricultural skills.
- The study is set in rural Ghana and uses four waves of survey data on 5,000 households.
- It uses exogenous shocks to agricultural productivity and a vignette survey design to elicit parental beliefs.
Limitations
Only the abstract is available, so the findings, effect sizes and methods in detail are not reported. The paper studies household decisions and does not evaluate an intervention.
Abstract
In contexts where child labour is pervasive, household decisions about allocating children's time between school and work involve a trade-off: current returns from child labour versus future returns from education. This paper tests for the existence of a third factor: future returns from child labour, as parents view farm work as an investment in agricultural skills. We provide evidence on each component of this trade-off in the context of rural Ghana by leveraging four waves of survey data on 5,000 households, exogenous shocks to agricultural productivity, and a vignette survey design to elicit parental beliefs.