Children's work and parental investment in education in north-western Tanzania

Changes associated with modernisation, including livelihood change, urbanisation, and the introduction of formal education, reduce children’s ability to contribute to their households, and produce a trade-off between work and learning. Increasingly high levels of investment in education are thought to raise the costs of children, resulting in a ‘quantity-quality trade-off’ which incentivises reduced fertility. Relatively few studies have examined children’s time allocation in contemporary transitioning populations, where education is available and valued, but where subsistence livelihoods still create demand for children’s work. This study collected time allocation data from 1,278 children living in two communities in a rapidly modernising setting in Mwanza region, Tanzania. Focus group discussions were also conducted to investigate the perceived costs and benefits of education for parents and adolescents. The findings from this research highlight the importance of considering children’s work in providing a more nuanced understanding of variation in education. Lower than anticipated trade-offs between work and school suggest the opportunity costs of school in this context may be relatively low, potentially contributing to the stalled fertility decline. Households may balance work and schooling demands through substitution between co-resident children, and through fostering networks, with implications for classic models of fertility decline which focus mainly on parental investment. Girls’ household work involves a sacrifice of leisure time and does not appear to diminish significantly with modernisation, suggesting the need to challenge gender stereotypes, and reduce the domestic work burden in transitioning contexts. Finally, education is highly valued, but the barriers to academic achievement mean that few experience the desired benefits, pointing to the importance of improving employment prospects together with providing good-quality, locally relevant schooling

Understanding the careers cold spots.

This paper sets out our cold spots analysis which provides us with some important insights about how opportunities are organised in England. In the report we examine which areas have: high levels of engagement between schools and employers; young people who are making opportunity informed decisions and achieving positive outcomes in terms of education and employment. We also examine the areas in which young people are most likely to experience substantial barriers. This analysis allows The Careers & Enterprise Company to understand where more career support is needed and to direct our resources towards these areas. We hope that it this analysis will also guide the activities of others working in this space.N/

Sending children to school: rural livelihoods and parental investment in education in northern Tanzania

Evolutionary and economic models of the demographic transition argue that economic development incentivizes low-fertility, high-investment parental strategies, and that such strategies emerge first in relatively wealthy families within populations undergoing 'modernization'. However, most research focuses on fertility reduction rather than shifting parental investment, and few studies consider how parental decisions regarding educational investment vary in relation to alternative rural livelihoods. Using data from 19 villages and 1,719 children (7-19 years), we investigate the effects of diversifying livelihoods, wealth and child characteristics on multiple measures of educational investment in rural Tanzania. Children in (predominantly Maasai) pastoralist households were the least likely to attend school, while neighboring farmers and business owners invested more in education. Household wealth, as measured by asset ownership, was also independently positively associated with educational investment for all livelihood types. These results are consistent with lower opportunity costs and greater perceived economic pay-offs to education for relatively labor market-integrated and wealthy households. However, among pastoralists wealth held in livestock was not associated with educational investment This result may reflect elevated opportunity costs related to the child labor demands of livestock herding. We find a marginal female advantage in education, which is surprising because qualitative research and numerous development projects in the region emphasize the disadvantages facing girls. We also find suggestive evidence of a later-born disadvantage (i.e. borderline statistically significant) consistent with the predicted consequences of sequential household resource dilution. Female advantage and later-born disadvantage were particularly evident in the wealthiest households. Greater reliability in the returns to education for wealthy households may favor preferential treatment of children with higher perceived long-term payoffs, while equal but lower-level investment in all children in relatively poor families may reflect a bet-hedging strategy. We discuss our results in light of parental investment theory and the wider literature on the demographic transition. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Increasing flower species richness in agricultural landscapes alters insect pollinator networks: Implications for bee health and competition

Ecological restoration programs are established to reverse land degradation, mitigate biodiversity loss, and reinstate ecosystem services. Following recent agricultural intensification that led to a decrease in flower diversity and density in rural areas and subsequently to the decline of many insects, conservation measures targeted at pollinators have been established, including sown wildflower strips (WFS) along field margins. Historically successful in establishing a high density of generalist bees and increasing pollinator diversity, the impact of enhanced flower provision on wider ecological interactions and the structure of pollinator networks has been rarely investigated. Here, we tested the effects of increasing flower species richness and flower density in agricultural landscapes on bee‐plant interaction networks. We measured plant species richness and flower density and surveyed honeybee and bumblebee visits on flowers across a range of field margins on 10 UK farms that applied different pollinator conservation measures. We found that both flower species richness and flower density significantly increased bee abundance, in early and late summer, respectively. At the network level, we found that higher flower species richness did not significantly alter bee species' generality indices, but significantly reduced network connectance and marginally reduced niche overlap across honeybees and bumblebee species, a proxy for insect competition. While higher connectance and niche overlap is believed to strengthen network robustness and often is the aim for the restoration of pollinator networks, we argue that carefully designed WFS may benefit bees by partitioning their foraging niche, limiting competition for resources and the potential for disease transmission via shared floral use. We also discuss the need to extend WFS and their positive effects into spring when wild bee populations are established

Earning their keep? Fostering, children's education, and work in north-western Tanzania

BACKGROUND Fostering, raising children that are not one's biological children, is common in many societies worldwide. Despite predicted lower investment in nonbiological offspring, numerous studies report no obvious well-being penalty for fostered children. Building on prior research, we suggest that fostering is incentivised by close relatedness between foster child and caregivers and that children's work contributions can offset their costs to fostering households. METHOD We used multilevel logistic and fractional multinomial regression analyses to investigate the association between fostering, educational investment, and time allocation in a sample of 1,273 Sukuma children (aged 7-19) from northwestern Tanzania, where fostering is traditionally common. RESULTS Twenty-six per cent of children are fostered, with most having at least one living parent. Children fostered by close kin have similar educational outcomes to those living with both biological parents, though their grade for age is lower, perhaps reflecting differences in timing rather than overall level of investment. Those fostered by distant kin are less likely to be enrolled or to progress to secondary school. Overall, fostered children are more likely to do farm work; however on weekdays when work conflicts with school, differences in time allocation to work activities are not pronounced. We further find that orphans are generally not particularly disadvantaged compared to other fostered children. CONCLUSION Being fostered by close kin does not appear to disadvantage children, and buffers orphans from parental death. Fostered children may offset some of their costs through increased farm work. CONTRIBUTION We extend previous work in this area through analysis of detailed time allocation data, providing insights into associations between fostering and children's workload

Trade-Offs in Children’s Time Allocation: Mixed Support for Embodied Capital Models of the Demographic Transition in Tanzania

Embodied capital theory (ECT) argues that socioeconomic “modernization” leads to high-cost, high-return parental investments in education, in turn incentivizing demographic transitions to low fertility. However, few studies have directly investigated the proposed opportunity costs of schooling in contemporary developing populations undergoing socioeconomic change. We present a study of children’s time use in two communities in Mwanza, Tanzania, representing either end of a local rural-urban gradient. Consistent with ECT, town residence compared with village residence was associated with increased schooling at the expense of time allocation to children’s work. However, these patterns apply primarily to boys, for whom herding work is relatively incompatible with schooling. Girls more readily combine domestic chores with school attendance, a pattern that may account for unexpectedly high female school enrollment in this population. Furthermore, the strongest time allocation trade-offs were not between school and work but between school and leisure time, suggesting overall low opportunity costs to education. Mixed support for ECT may partially explain why fertility decline has stalled in many low-income countries despite education uptake. Finally, we advocate that international development programs consider the well-being implications of reduced leisure time accompanying education uptake, particularly for girls maintaining a “double shift” of school and domestic work

Sharing the Load: How Do Coresident Children Influence the Allocation of Work and Schooling in Northwestern Tanzania?

Economic and evolutionary models of parental investment often predict education biases toward earlier-born children, resulting from either household resource dilution or parental preference. Previous research, however, has not always found these predicted biases-perhaps because in societies where children work, older children are more efficient at household tasks and substitute for younger children, whose time can then be allocated to school. The role of labor substitution in determining children's schooling remains uncertain, however, because few studies have simultaneously considered intrahousehold variation in both children's education and work. Here, we investigate the influence of coresident children on education, work, and leisure in northwestern Tanzania, using detailed time use data collected from multiple children per household (n = 1,273). We find that age order (relative age, compared with coresident children) within the household is associated with children's time allocation, but these patterns differ by gender. Relatively young girls do less work, have more leisure time, and have greater odds of school enrollment than older girls. We suggest that this results from labor substitution: older girls are more efficient workers, freeing younger girls' time for education and leisure. Conversely, relatively older boys have the highest odds of school enrollment among coresident boys, possibly reflecting traditional norms regarding household work allocation and age hierarchies. Gender is also important in household work allocation: boys who coreside with more girls do fewer household chores. We conclude that considering children as both producers and consumers is critical to understanding intrahousehold variation in children's schooling and work