Child Work and Schooling Costs in Rural Northern India

29 Pages Posted: 24 May 2006

See all articles by Gautam Hazarika

Gautam Hazarika

University of Texas at Brownsville; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Arjun S. Bedi

Erasmus University Rotterdam - International Institute of Social Studies; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: May 2006

Abstract

It is widely held that work by children obstructs schooling, so that working children in impoverished families will find it difficult to escape poverty. If children's school attendance and work were highly substitutable activities, it would be advisable to quell work in the interest of schooling and, if less child work were desirable for its own sake, to boost school attendance so as to reduce child work. Hence, this article examines the effects of schooling costs upon both children's propensities to work and to attend school in rural northern India in a bid to assess the extent of trade-off between the activities. Analyses of data from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two Northern Indian states, reveal a positive relation between child work and schooling costs, a negative relation between school enrollment and schooling costs, and that the decrease in the probability of child work from a decrease in schooling costs is comparable in magnitude to the corresponding increase in the probability of school enrollment, implying children's work and school attendance are strongly substitutable activities. Thus, unlike recent studies of child work in India's South Asian neighbors of Bangladesh and Pakistan, this paper uncovers evidence of substantial trade-off between child work and school attendance.

Keywords: child labor, schooling costs, India

JEL Classification: J22, O12

Suggested Citation

Hazarika, Gautam and Bedi, Arjun S., Child Work and Schooling Costs in Rural Northern India (May 2006). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2136, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=904155 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.904155

Gautam Hazarika (Contact Author)

University of Texas at Brownsville ( email )

Brownsville, TX 78520
United States

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Arjun S. Bedi

Erasmus University Rotterdam - International Institute of Social Studies ( email )

PO Box 29776
2502 LT The Hague, 2518 AX
Netherlands
+31 70 426 0493 (Phone)
+31 70 426 0799 (Fax)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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