What Determine Child Labor in Rural Ethiopia? (Panel Data Analysis)
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Despite the detrimental effects of child labor have on the nation and the availabilities of several
written rights of children in the constitution, child labor is still a wide spread and sever problem
in rural Ethiopia. The objective of this research was to identify the socio-economic factors
affecting child labor in rural Ethiopia.
Random effects model using Generalized Least Squares (GLS) estimator was used to estimate
the determinants of child labor. The micro and balanced panel data from the Ethiopian Rural
Household Survey of the Economics department of the Addis Ababa University was employed in
the analysis.
The findings of the result supported the hypothesis that the child being farm worker and
domestic worker, age of child, dependency ratio, the presence of infant in the house hold,
household size, number of plots of land, consumption expenditure, distance from high schools
were positively related to child labor. The region where the household resides also had an effect
on child labor incidence. However, first work starting age, enrollment status of the child, age
square of child and the number of male members have had significant but negative effect on
child labor. In our study we found that there was gender and age bias in child labor incidence.
From policy perspective, enforcing the family planning policy, provision of productive but labor
saving assets, investment in education infrastructure, enforcing the ILO convention of minimum
age for employment and instituting saving and credit institutions like eqqub and bank should
deserve essential place in mitigating child labor .However, we need all rounded but gender, age,
type of activities and region specific policies rather than “one size fits all” policy
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Economic Policy Analysis