Theoretical Framework

The Decision Between Child Labour and Schooling

Children's level of schooling and work is determined by parental choices, which in turn
depend on the costs and benefits of available education and work opportunities. There
are costs associated with raising a child, both direct (school fees, tutoring, school
uniforms) and indirect (travel time, school time, additional tuition and home schooling).
This time spent on schooling could be used for work, and so the opportunity cost of
raising a child is the lost income that the household would otherwise provide. Education
also has significant benefits; it enables a child to accumulate human capital and earn
higher incomes in the future. Therefore, the hindrance to human capital development is
the main cost of child labour. The amount of these costs depends on many factors,
including the quality of the school and wage opportunities; Poor schooling or a lack of
well-paying jobs reduce return to formal education. In addition, the benefits of child
labor can also be significant. Not only does it contribute directly to the household
through the income raised by the child, but it can free a parent from some family-related
activities and allow them to seek wage labor outside of the household enterprise or farm.
The Impact of Child Labour on Educational Attainment: Theory
It is widely believed that child labor impairs children's educational achievement in a variety of
ways. Since both are time expended, work generally competes with time spent on educational
activities such as attending school, taking additional courses and doing homework. Because
working children have less time to attend school, they cannot achieve the same educational
benefits as their non-working peers. Child labor can also be tiring, exhausting, and lacking in
energy for children, affecting their ability to concentrate in the classroom or when studying at
home. Even if they devote as many hours to attendance and study as non-working children,
their lack of energy could impair their ability to reap the same benefits from the learning
process.
Nevertheless, child labor is unlikely to have any impact on the level of education. Having
children work instead of doing nothing does not jeopardize time that would otherwise be used
as input for educational activities. Even when this is the case, the impact of child labor may be
insignificant when the work intensity is very low, the activities are not particularly strenuous, or
when the work helps children use their time more efficiently.
In addition, child labor can even have a positive effect on educational success. Through the
work, children can put skills acquired at school into practice and thus consolidate their
knowledge. For example, working in the family business can facilitate the development of their
quantitative skills and serve as informal tutoring, requiring the child to apply their numeracy
skills in real-life situations. Juggling work and school can also improve children's time
management skills and make them more efficient in learning. In addition, the work can give
children a sense of self-esteem, responsibility and self-confidence. For example, a study of
children's contribution to household chores in Ethiopia found that working for the children
themselves is a source of pride (Heissler and Porter 2010). Work can therefore develop
children's human and psychosocial capital, which can improve their academic performance.
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