Is prohibiting child labour enough? Coffee certification and child schooling in Ethiopia and Uganda

Private sustainability standards are spreading rapidly in global agri-food value chains as a means of communicating important aspects of safety, ethics and environmental attributes of food production, to consumers. A cross-cutting requirement for most standards is the prohibition of child labour intended to improve child welfare. In this paper, we investigate the child schooling implications in the coffee sector in Ethiopia and Uganda. We use cross-sectional household survey data and probit, tobit, propensity score matching and difference-in-difference techniques to estimate the impact of certification on schooling. We find that FT certification increases the likelihood of children to be enrolled in secondary school by 25% and, primary and secondary schooling efficiency by 10% and 16%, respectively. We find that RA certification has no impact on both school enrolment and schooling efficiency. The results imply that prohibition of child labour alone is not sufficient to improve schooling outcomes and that FT keeps its child welfare promises in South Western Ethiopia and Eastern Uganda.