IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/sajeco/v87y2019i3p283-301.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Public Works Programme on Child Labour in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Yonatan Dinku

Abstract

Given the conventional wisdom that poverty and associated income shocks are the fundamental causes of child labour, from a policy perspective, there is a perception that social safety net programmes can play a vital role in reducing child labour. While there is extensive evidence that shows the prevalence of child labour is low among beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer programmes, the impact of workfare programs on child labour has been rarely investigated in the economics literature. This paper addresses the issue by evaluating the impact of the public works component of the Productive Safety Net Programme implemented in Ethiopia in 2005. The programme aims to help poor households to build assets and develop resilience to shocks through employment in public projects. Results from child fixed effects estimations show that children in programme beneficiary households are significantly less likely than their counterparts in non‐beneficiary households to be involved in child labour. The findings suggest that, if well targeted, even safety net programmes that do not primarily target child outcomes can be useful in addressing child labour problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Yonatan Dinku, 2019. "The Impact of Public Works Programme on Child Labour in Ethiopia," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 87(3), pages 283-301, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:87:y:2019:i:3:p:283-301
    DOI: 10.1111/saje.12226
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12226
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/saje.12226?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gonzalo Cómbita Mora & Óscar Pérez Rodríguez, 2020. "International Remittances and Child Welfare: A Case Study on Cali Colombia," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, vol. 86(3), pages 73-103, November.
    2. Dagim Dawit Gonsamo & Herman Hay Ming Lo & Ko Ling Chan, 2021. "The Role of Stomach Infrastructures on Children’s Work and Child Labour in Africa: Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-26, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:87:y:2019:i:3:p:283-301. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.