Adult mortality and children’s transition into marriage

Adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS and other diseases is posited to affect children through a number of pathways. On top of health and education outcomes, adult mortality can have significant effects on children by influencing demographic outcomes including the timing of marriage. This paper examines marriage outcomes for a sample of children interviewed in Tanzania in the early 1990s and re-interviewed in 2004. We find that while girls who became paternal orphans married at significantly younger ages, orphanhood had little effect on boys. On the other hand, non-parental deaths in the household affect the timing of marriage for boys.adult mortality, AIDS/HIV, marriage, orphans

Who Gets to Stay in School? Long-run Impact of Income Shocks on Schooling in Rural Tanzania

This paper shows that income shocks to rural households have permanent effects on the educational attainment of 7-15 year old children within the household. Using a 13 year panel survey of households in rural Tanzania, I find that idiosyncratic crop shocks such as pests, theft and fire cause changes in the distribution of schooling among children within the household that persist 10-13 years after the shock. They affect older (12-15) girls and younger (7-11) boys most adversely. The effects are remarkably persistent in households affected by shocks of varying magnitudes. An investigation of plausible channels for these effects suggests that an increase in the chore burden of older girls within the household in response to a crop shock is likely to be part of the explanation for the adverse effect of shocks on this cohort.

Starting together, growing apart: gender gaps in learning from preschool to adulthood in four developing countries

Este documento de trabajo estudia la evolución de las brechas de género en las habilidades cognitivas múltiples de las edades de 5 a 19 años de edad, utilizando datos de panel únicos de Young Lives de Etiopía, India, Perú y Vietnam; es la investigación más extensa basada en paneles sobre esta cuestión en países en desarrollo. Los hallazgos sugieren que, en los cuatro países, las brechas de género en el aprendizaje están ausentes o son pequeñas en magnitud absoluta antes de la entrada a la escuela (a los 5 años) y en la edad de la escuela primaria (8 años). Grandes brechas emergen más tarde, ensanchándose particularmente entre las edades de 12 y 15; las brechas favorecen a los niños en Etiopía, India y Perú, pero a las niñas en Vietnam. Esto está en contraste con los contextos de la OCDE, donde las importantes brechas de género en matemáticas y habilidades lingüísticas tienden a ser en la misma dirección. Posteriormente, estas brechas de aprendizaje parecen persistir en su mayoría hasta la edad adulta temprana. Al establecer la dirección, magnitud y persistencia de brechas de género, prestamos especial atención a los problemas de ordinalidad y decadencia en los puntajes de las pruebas. Los modelos basados ​​en paneles y de valor agregado con un amplio conjunto de covariables que incluyen logros pasados, salud infantil, uso del tiempo, educación y riqueza de los padres y calidad escolar explican como máximo la mitad o dos tercios de la brecha de género transversal en puntajes de exámenes en 15 años

The consequences of child labor : evidence from longitudinal data in rural Tanzania

This paper exploits a unique longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the consequences of child labor on education, employment choices, and marital status over a 10-year horizon. Shocks to crop production and rainfall are used as instrumental variables for child labor. For boys, the findings show that a one-standard-deviation (5.7 hour) increase in child labor leads 10 years later to a loss of approximately one year of schooling and to a substantial increase in the likelihood of farming and of marrying at a younger age. Strikingly, there are no significant effects on education for girls, but there is a significant increase in the likelihood of marrying young. The findings also show that crop shocks lead to an increase in agricultural work for boys and instead lead to an increase in chore hours for girls. The results are consistent with education being a lower priority for girls and/or with chores causing less disruption for education than agricultural work. The increased chore hours could also account for the results on marriage for girls.Street Children,Youth and Governance,Labor Policies,Labor Markets,Children and Youth

Determinants of child labour: the case of Andhra Pradesh: Young Lives Working Paper 48

In this study, I examine the extent to which child labour is explained by the main determinants proposed in the literature. I focus on three determinants: income shocks, household composition and parental preferences. In addition, I examine the role of child-specific characteristics, such as psycho-social abilities and nutritional endowment. While there is extensive literature on child labour determinants, it is predominantly theoretical and tends to treat each determinant in isolation from the others. I use two rounds of data from the Young Lives project on a cohort of children living in Andhra Pradesh, India who were interviewed at the ages of 7 and then 11 to examine the effects of inter- and intra-household factors – as well as child-specific characteristics – on child labour in a unified empirical framework. I find that children work more in response to income shocks; that child labour is sensitive to household composition in terms of the age and gender of the other children; and, in urban areas, that it varies according to the bargaining power of women in the household. Investigation of child-specific fixed effects further suggests that nutritional status, reading skills and ability to get along with peers may also be relevant to whether and how much children work

Schooling and beyond: essays on skill formation and learning in deprived contexts

This thesis explores learning and formation of cognitive and non-cognitive skills within formal and non-formal environments, as well as the impact of migration on fertility behaviour in three separate empirical studies. In two of the papers (Chapters 2 and 4) I utilise a 13 year individual-level panel data-set from rural Tanzania, while the third one (Chapter 3) is based on cross-sectional data that I collected in urban Bombay slums in 2007. I consider skill acquisition and learning in a number of spheres. First, I adopt the conventional notion of school-based learning and examine the role of income shocks in evolution of schooling inequalities, in rural Tanzania. I find evidence of shock-induced permanent changes in the schooling of those affected by the shocks in later childhood (age 7-13), 10-13 years later. Further, I find suggestive evidence that the household short-term labour response may to be one of the mechanisms for these long-term effects. Next, I broaden the definition of learning to include acquisition of non-cognitive skills. Although there is growing recognition of the importance of these, there is no evidence, within a developing country context, on effectiveness of interventions targeting them. The second paper is an evaluation of a long-term non-formal schooling intervention in Bombay slums, which works on raising non-cognitive skills, including self-esteem, a sense of agency, and aspirations of children. It shows that, like cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills can be effectively raised through sustained intervention, offering evidence of substantial positive programme effects. The final paper turns to examining the impact of migration among young women on fertility behaviour. Econometric panel data methods are combined with an instrumenting strategy to offer evidence of a causal positive impact of migration on the age at which women start having children, which is shown to be likely to have permanent effects on total fertility. The findings are most consistent with the presence of temporary post migration disruption effects

Determinants of child labour: the case of Andhra Pradesh

In this study, I examine the extent to which child labour is explained by the main determinants proposed in the literature. I focus on three determinants: income shocks, household composition and parental preferences. In addition, I examine the role of child-specific characteristics, such as psycho-social abilities and nutritional endowment. While there is extensive literature on child labour determinants, it is predominantly theoretical and tends to treat each determinant in isolation from the others. I use two rounds of data from the Young Lives project on a cohort of children living in Andhra Pradesh, India who were interviewed at the ages of 7 and then 11 to examine the effects of inter- and intra-household factors – as well as child-specific characteristics – on child labour in a unified empirical framework. I find that children work more in response to income shocks; that child labour is sensitive to household composition in terms of the age and gender of the other children; and, in urban areas, that it varies according to the bargaining power of women in the household. Investigation of child-specific fixed effects further suggests that nutritional status, reading skills and ability to get along with peers may also be relevant to whether and how much children work

Adult mortality and children's transition into marriage

Adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS and other diseases is posited to affect children through a number of pathways. On top of health and education outcomes, adult mortality can have significant effects on children by influencing demographic outcomes including the timing of marriage. This paper examines marriage outcomes for a sample of children interviewed in Tanzania in the early 1990s and re-interviewed in 2004. We find that while girls who became paternal orphans married at significantly younger ages, orphanhood had little effect on boys. On the other hand, non-parental deaths in the household affect the timing of marriage for boys