Counterintuitive results (education in Burkina Faso) [y última semana en Senegal]

Using data from BRIGHT, an integrated program that aims to improve school participation in rural communities in Burkina Faso, we investigate the impact of school subsidies and increased access to education on child work. Regression discontinuity estimates demonstrate that, while BRIGHT substantially improved school participation, it did not reduce – in fact may have increased – children’s participation in economic activities and household chores. . . If education programmes are implemented to achieve a combination of increased school participation and a reduction in child work they may either have to be combined with different interventions that effectively reduce child work or they may have to be tuned more carefully to the incentives and constraints the child labourer faces.

Source: a new paper by De Hoop and Rosati (May 2013). The tille is "Does Promoting School Attendance Reduce Child Labour? Evidence from Burkina Faso's Bright Project." 

[AM: Children involvement on economic activities or household chores is not necessary a bad thing.]

[Esta  es nuestra última semana en Senegal. Les dejo una gráfica de buenas noticias para este país - lo que se observa también en otros países de Africa]:

Guatemala paper of the day

From the paper "Street Youth Labor as an Expression of Survival and Self-Worth: Voices from Youth in Guatemala City," by Karabanow Gurman & Naylor (Critical Social Work, 2012). 

This paper explores the ways in which employment/ labor are situated within the daily lives of Guatemalan street youth. The youth interviewed primarily engaged in informal money-making activities. These activities not only demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, and resilience of street-involved young people, but their need to undertake any number of often undesirable tasks to survive. Findings from this study suggest that such work can provide street youth with greater self-confidence and self-esteem – reshaping their identities as “productive citizens.” However, such work, primarily due to its very public nature, can also re-marginalize young people as “unworthy” and “non-citizens.”

The number of interviews in the sample is small (18) but enough to have an idea of the complexity of the issue.  

Does Work Impede Child Learning? The Case of Senegal

In African countries, children often combine school and work. This article exploits Senegalese panel data to assess the relationship between child labor and learning, measured by test scores. Test scores from the beginning of primary school control for children’s cognitive abilities, and children’s past time allocation decisions are instrumented by changes in rainfall and distance to primary school. Some of the tests were administered verbally in order to pick up effects for children who had only attended school very briefly. I do not find that children’s past participation in economic activities is associated with lower adolescent cognitive achievement, but rather that it is associated with higher oral mathematics scores. This association is stronger when I control for years of schooling, which suggests that work does displace schooling but does allow children to acquire some skills. From a paper by Dumas (2012).

And the paper concludes - from an early draft:

The positive impact of work vanishes though if the child worked more than 4 hours a week on average when he started his activity or even strongly depletes accumulation of human capital if he was employed outside of the household.

Child labor is extremely resiliant, especially in the case of boys. See here (Tanzania) and here (Brazil).