IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/etd/wpaper/007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental Resource Collection versus Children’s Schooling: Evidence from Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Bahre Gebru

    (Department of Economics, College of Business and Economics, Aksum University, Aksum)

  • Sosina Bezu

    (School of Economics, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa)

Abstract

Previous studies in Ethiopia treat child labour and schooling in a broader sense without much attention to the kind of labor they are engaged in. This paper distinctively examines the adverse effect of natural resources scarcity on children’s schooling and the possible gender bias against girls’ schooling due to resource collection work. It uses cross sectional data of 316 children aging 7 to 18 years collected from 120 rural households of Enderta and Hintalo Wajerat woredas in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. The two-stage conditional maximum likelihood (2SCML) estimation technique is employed to take care of endogeneity between schooling and collection intensity decisions. The results revealed that a 50 percent increase in collection intensity reduces the likelihood of child schooling by approximately 12 percent. Even though girls more often participate on resource gathering tasks, we find no evidence of gender based difference against girls’ schooling due to resource collection intensity. Timely collection of fodder resources from cultivated land—soon enough so amount and quality will not deteriorate, planting fodder-rich tree species, promoting labor sharing arrangements, and maintenance of the non- perating constructed water sources can reduce the time spent on environmental resources collection and improve the likelihood of schooling.

Suggested Citation

  • Bahre Gebru & Sosina Bezu, 2012. "Environmental Resource Collection versus Children’s Schooling: Evidence from Tigray, Northern Ethiopia," Working Papers 007, Policy Studies Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:etd:wpaper:007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mtdedri.org/RePEc/etd/wpaper/EDRI_WP007_Childrens_Schooling.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nazmul Chaudhury & Luc Christiaensen & Mohammad Niaz Asadullah, 2006. "Schools, Household, Risk, and Gender: Determinants of Child Schooling in Ethiopia," CSAE Working Paper Series 2006-06, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    2. Gronau, Reuben, 1977. "Leisure, Home Production, and Work-The Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(6), pages 1099-1123, December.
    3. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Evenson, Robert E, 1977. "Fertility, Schooling, and the Economic Contribution of Children in Rural India: An Econometric Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1065-1079, July.
    4. Maria Winkler-Dworak, 2003. "Food Security, Fertility Differentials and Land Degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Dynamic Framework," VID Working Papers 0301, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
    5. Rivers, Douglas & Vuong, Quang H., 1988. "Limited information estimators and exogeneity tests for simultaneous probit models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 347-366, November.
    6. Rasmus Heltberg & Thomas Channing Arndt & Nagothu Udaya Sekhar, 2000. "Fuelwood Consumption and Forest Degradation: A Household Model for Domestic Energy Substitution in Rural India," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(2), pages 213-232.
    7. Sharada Weir, 2011. "Parental Attitudes and Demand for Schooling in Ethiopia," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 20(1), pages 90-110, January.
    8. Wagura Ndiritu, Simon & Nyangena, Wilfred, 2010. "Environmental Goods Collection and Children’s Schooling: Evidence from Kenya," RFF Working Paper Series dp-10-18-efd, Resources for the Future.
    9. Harry A. Sackey, 2007. "The Determinants of School Attendance and Attainment in Ghana: A Gender Perspective," Working Papers 173, African Economic Research Consortium, Research Department.
    10. George Psacharopoulos, 1997. "Child labor versus educational attainment Some evidence from Latin America," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 10(4), pages 377-386.
    11. Nankhuni, Flora J. & Findeis, Jill L., 2004. "Natural resource-collection work and children's schooling in Malawi," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 31(2-3), pages 123-134, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Birouke Tefera & Frehiwot Worku & Zewdu Ayalew, 2012. "Implications of Oil Price Shocks and Subsidizing Oil Prices to the Ethiopian Economy: A CGE Analysis," Working Papers 008, Policy Studies Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. O’Brien, James & Do, Phoebe & Edelson, Micaela, 2021. "The effects of fuelwood on children’s schooling in rural Vietnam," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    2. Nankhuni, Flora J. & Findeis, Jill L., 2004. "Natural resource-collection work and children's schooling in Malawi," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 31(2-3), pages 123-134, December.
    3. F. Rosati & R. Straub, 2006. "Does Work during Childhood affect Adult's Health? An Analysis for Guatemala," UCW Working Paper 10, Understanding Children's Work (UCW Programme).
    4. Beyene, Abebe D. & Mekonnen, Alemu & Gebreegziabher, Zenebe, 2014. "Natural Resource Collection and Children’s Literacy: Empirical Evidence from Panel Data in Rural Ethiopia," RFF Working Paper Series dp-14-18-efd, Resources for the Future.
    5. Admassie, A. & Bedi, A.S., 2003. "Attending school : two 'Rs' and child work in rural Ethiopia," ISS Working Papers - General Series 19146, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    6. Nankhuni, Flora J. & Findeis, Jill L., 2003. "Natural Resource Collection Work And Schooling In Malawi," 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa 25829, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. Nankhuni, Flora J. & Findeis, Jill L., 2003. "The Effects Of Environmental Degradation On Women'S And Children'S Time Allocation Decisions In Malawi: Impact On Children'S Welfare," 2003 Annual meeting, July 27-30, Montreal, Canada 22117, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    8. Scheurlen, Elena, 2015. "Time allocation to energy resource collection in rural Ethiopia: Gender-disaggregated household responses to changes in firewood availability:," IFPRI discussion papers 1419, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Bhalotra, Sonia & Heady, Chris, 2000. "Child farm labour: theory and evidence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6654, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Caroline Krafft, 2020. "Why is fertility on the rise in Egypt? The role of women’s employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1173-1218, October.
    11. Céline Nauges & Jon Strand, 2017. "Water Hauling and Girls’ School Attendance: Some New Evidence from Ghana," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 66(1), pages 65-88, January.
    12. Moshe Hazan & Binyamin Berdugo, 2002. "Child Labour, Fertility, and Economic Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 810-828, October.
    13. Orazem, Peter F. & Gunnarsson, Louise Victoria, 2004. "Child Labour, School Attendance And Performance: A Review," Working Papers 18213, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    14. Holger Strulik, 2004. "Child mortality, child labour and economic development," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 547-568, July.
    15. Gebremeskel Berhane Tesfay & Babatunde Abidoye, 2019. "Shocks in food availability and intra-household resources allocation: evidence on children nutrition outcomes in Ethiopia," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, December.
    16. Drusilla K. Brown & Alan V. Deardorff & Robert M. Stern, 2009. "The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing Countries," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Globalization And International Trade Policies, chapter 17, pages 623-687, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Sinha, Nistha, 2005. "Fertility, Child Work, and Schooling Consequences of Family Planning Programs: Evidence from an Experiment in Rural Bangladesh," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(1), pages 97-128, October.
    18. Bell, Clive & Gersbach, Hans, 2009. "Child Labor And The Education Of A Society," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 220-249, April.
    19. Owen O'Donnell & Furio C. Rosati & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2005. "Health effects of child work: Evidence from rural Vietnam," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 18(3), pages 437-467, September.
    20. Benabid Jegaden, Robin & Lemoine, Jade, 2021. "Chocs de revenu et éducation des enfants en présence d’imperfections du marché du crédit et de l’assurance : Mécanismes décisionnels en Ethiopie," SocArXiv 3qrjv, Center for Open Science.

    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:etd:wpaper:007. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Dagmawi Atnafu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.psi.gov.et .

    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.