HONR228N | info

Child Labor vs. Primary Education

Primary education is important in almost all aspects of improving the lives of people in developing countries. Whether it is to improve the health of the public, decrease fertility, or decrease infant mortality. We cannot force these policies on people without educating them. Primary education provides people with simple reading and numerical skills. They may be minimal education for people in America, but for developing countries, they do not even have that. Without the simple reading skills, they are not able to receive critical information through mass media especially through printed materials. And without the media, they will not be able to learn about the importance of using contraceptives, or the importance of sending their children to schools. They will be stuck like that without primary education.

There was a program called the Zambia Nutrition Education in Basic Schools (NEBS) project that incorporated school-based health and nutrition education in primary schools. The goal of this program was to not only educate the students but the students’ family as well. They had special homework assignments where parents and other family members had to get involved and work together. This raised awareness of the importance of proper nutrition and sanitation. This family participation created an education friendly atmosphere both in school and at home. According to the study, the parents’ response was overwhelming. The parents started telling their neighbors and tried to get the whole community involved by encouraging hand washing, donating food to schools, and digging holes for wastes (Sherman & Muehlhoff, 2007). This shows how important primary education is, not only for the students, but for the whole community as well. The only problem in this project would be that those communities would need the physical resources in order to incorporate all these practices. They would need clean water for sanitation and sufficient food to be healthy. But based on the study, there is a lot of “gains in awareness, knowledge, and behavior” even without all of the nutrition and health services (Sherman & Muehlhoff, 2007). This is true because these educational gains cannot be taken away, they will be able to keep the knowledge with them forever and utilize it to their advantage. We have to keep in mind that primary education can go beyond the normal textbook material. Teachers can teach these children about everyday life problems such as improving health and the environment that the children and their families can relate to.

Another positive result from primary education is that it decreases child mortality. The Demographic Health Survey (DHS) displayed the relationship between the mothers’ level of education to the mortality of their children. According to the DHS data obtained from 17 different developing countries, there is a strong relationship between maternal education and infant mortality (Fuchs, Pamuk, & Lutz, 2010). This is probably because children are susceptible to a wide range of diseases and injuries that can be prevented through healthy nutrition, proper sanitation, and or proper treatments for the diseases. They can be easily prevented through those practices only if the parents were more aware of the importance of those practices. Even if a family were rich, if they had no knowledge about how to raise a healthy child, the money would be useless. This is why education is so valuable, even more than money. Of course, in primary education, children are not taught how to raise a child. But they are taught how to read and analyze information. If these methods of raising a child were to be advertised on the radio or on a newspaper, they would be able to retrieve new information and knowledge everyday. Not only that, children in primary schools are taught about the importance of sanitation and maintaining a healthy diet, so if the education was strong enough, those children will carry the information forever and pass it onto their child. That is why education is so much more valuable than any amount of money. No one can take away your ability to read and obtain knowledge; and it is always free to give away the information you learn to a next-door neighbor.

There is also evidence that female education increases the use of contraception and the age of their marriage, which in turn decrease fertility. Increasing enrollment in primary education can help reduce fertility, so education policies should also be adjusted to this data (Jain & Nag, 1986). Young girls that go to primary school are more likely to be more independent and realize that education is important. So instead of getting married at an early age and having children, they will focus on studying and improving their own lives. For these girls, primary education does not have to stop at just simple reading and numerical skills. Schools can provide girls with information about contraceptives and the consequences of high fertility. This shows that education among the female population is even more important because they are the ones that look after the children. But it is also important to note that often times, information is not enough to change behaviors. We need to see changes in the norms. And just because we give them the information does not mean that people fully understand the importance of reducing fertility. The only way we can do to help them understand is to keep telling them, either door to door, or through primary education.

One of the big problems that go against primary education is child labor. In countries like Ethiopia, child labor is normal even though it is bad for the development of the child. The government and parents of children alike believe that domestic and farm activities are far more important than education. Nearly half of the children have to carry out laboring tasks, while only 1/5 of the children went to school (Admassie, 2003). And a majority of the children that go to school also have responsibilities at home that they must carry out while going to school. This tells us that we cannot complete get rid of child labor because children actually play a large and active role in contributing to the family’s production. If we were to force those children out of labor and into schools, the economic repercussions could lead families into greater poverty.

There is also gender bias that makes decreasing child labor and increasing school attendance even more difficult. The study that took place in Brazil shows that mothers and fathers are more biased towards their own gender (Emerson & Souza, 2007). So fathers tend to take more care of their sons and mothers, their daughters. In order to reduce child labor and increase school attendance, we must first define child labor in that specific community. Child labor differs among different communities. Some communities have child labor that is generally geared towards male activity, whereas others have labor that is aimed more for girls. So in order to implement policies to increase school attendance, we first have to figure out what the child labor activities are. Once we do, we have to make policies geared towards either the fathers or the mothers. If the child labor is predominantly a male activity, then we have to make policies to aim for the fathers of the community because as the study shows, fathers invest more heavily in sons. If child labor were typically a female activity in the community, then we would have to make policies aimed at the mothers. As I explained, child labor is different among many different communities. So child labor and its effect are going to be vastly different around the world. It is the duty of the policymakers to investigate those differences and take them into account when formulating policies.

People all over the world have a notion that all child labor is bad. But what would happen if child labor were banned? Data shows that policies designed to prohibit child labor may end up harming the poorest parents and their families because the children provide families with significant assistance (Edmons, 2006). So instead of making policies focused on ending child labor, we should focus on making schooling affordable. Children that attended school showed decline in labor work up to nearly 100% for rural boys (Edmonds, 2006). This proves that attending school decreases the amount of work that children can do at home. Developed countries around the world were built on the use of child labor, including America. In the 1900s, child labor was a part of the norm in America. Child labor was only decreased when the people of the nation started to realize the importance of the children’s health and education. But now a days, policymakers are trying to force these labor bans on developing countries for the sake of satisfying their own conscience. Because when we look at the consequences of India’s legislation against child labor, the Child Labor Act of 1986, we see that there was a decrease in child wages due to the fact that it was now illegal for children to work. That means employers can threaten to get the government involved but the children will still work because they need the money even if it is illegal (Bharadwaj, Lakdawal, & Li, 2013). The act actually increased child labor and thus decreased school attendance. So instead of focusing on banning child labor, policymakers should focus more on primary education so that child labor will naturally decrease as the data shows.

Figure 1 (Huisman & Smits, 2009)

There are many factors that go into deciding whether children are sent to school as shown in the diagram above from Huisman and Smits’ paper from 2009. For many parents, sending children to school instead of making them do labor is a sort of a gamble. They have to decide whether the education is worth the risks for uncertain returns. Surprisingly there is a great amount of cost to schooling such as "books, school fees, uniforms, and travel costs" (Huisman & Smits, 2009). But some of the costs are not just physical costs. There are also theoretical opportunity costs because children cannot spend those times at home helping around the house or the family business. But we cannot promote child labor. Many of the developed countries utilized child labor, but sooner or later, they learned to weed it out of their society. We cannot and we must not force bans on these developing countries, but we can assist them in taking a step in the right direction and that is primary education. As I’ve explained before, education is invaluable to not only the student, but also to the students’ family and community as well. So we must use the diagram to analyze each and every one of the factors that play in sending a child to school.

Based on the diagram, one of the most critical findings was that mothers who were educated are more likely to send their children to schools. But the problem is that most adult females have not experienced the benefits of primary education. So policymakers should think of methods of influencing mothers through the media, especially radio and television programs where illiteracy will not cause a problem. These programs should emphasize the importance of education in children. We can then influence those mothers to put their children through primary education. And those children will experience the benefits of primary education and thus those children will later send their children to primary schools.

An important similarity seen amongst families of all social and economic groups is that the quality and quantity of the educational facilities is essential is promoting primary education. Even if the family is rich, if the schools are too far away or if there are not enough teachers, parents will not send their children to school. Parents in poorer economic groups think that it is not worth sending the children to school if they can be put to better use right at home. A solution would be to build new schools, especially in rural communities. If that is not possible, then the cost of transportation must be reduced.

Like we discussed in class, instead of making policies, the first step is to map out all of the factors that influence the schooling of a child. We get too excited about all of these solutions that we want to implement all of these solutions all at once, but we first need to set up experiments where we can fully figure how these solutions can be developed into policies.

We cannot assume that all child labor is harmful to children. There are a lot of policymakers that focus on eliminating child labor completely, exclaiming that child labor is bad. When in fact, data shows that child labor helps children prepare for wage employment and actually provides experience that could lead to increased earnings in the future (Beegle, Dehejia, & Gatti, 2004). The paper also found that returns to work experience are much higher than the returns of educations at first. But eventually, there is so much a child can learn from experience, the child would need to go to school in order to learn other necessarily information. This reminded me of the way schools work in developed countries. The students in America are so focused on education, but once they get into the real world of employment, they don't know how to handle responsibilities. And employers prefer workers who are actually experienced in the field not just students who learn by reading textbooks and taking tests. So this is the opposite situation in developing countries. These countries are so focused only on labor that they are forgetting the importance of education and ultimately child labor "leads to a 30 percent lower chance of being in school" (Beegle, Dehejia, & Gatti, 2004). But the paper is not out to prove that child labor is more beneficial over education. It just provides readers with the fact that it cannot be fully eliminated. It is a part of their culture and the economy. The paper sets out to prove that education is still important because in the long run, education also further increases wage earnings. So basically, what the data is telling us is that going to school instead of working at home would put great burden on not just the child, but on the whole family. They would only be working towards a seemingly impossible long-term goal by investing large amounts of money into education. But at the same time, making children work at home provides families only an immediate economic relief. The ideal situation is where the child is still working at home but still attending school. So it is the policymaker’s duty to find the middle ground between labor and education.

I previously talked about how there are many financial costs to attending primary schools, so does the economy within the family affect the schooling of the children? In Handa’s paper, three policy simulations were developed. One was to increase the number of schools in rural areas of Mozambique, another was to try to increase the household income of the families that live in Mozambique, and the last one was to determine whether the adult’s education level has any effect on the child’s education (Handa, 2002). The result of increasing the number of schools greatly increased enrollment of children in primary education by 13%. And doubling the size of the intervention would increase enrollment by up to 35%. However, the second simulation of increasing household income only raised enrollment rates by 2-4%. Whereas, theoretically increasing the literacy among the adults increased enrollment by 8-15%. That means in order to further increase the rate of enrollment in the next generation of children; we must get the children of the current generation into school. The study also went beyond just performing simulations; they calculated the approximate cost of the policy options. The first simulation of increasing the number of schools would cost about 3.8 million dollars for each percentage increase in enrollment. The second simulation of increasing household income would cost 12 million dollars for each percentage. The last simulation with improving adult household education would cost 1.8 million dollars per percentage point increase in the child’s enrollment. This shows that if policymakers want to decrease child labor and increase enrollment in primary education, influencing the household income has little to no effect. The data also shows that providing families with economic support is the least cost efficient policy if the policy maker’s sole purpose is to increase enrollment in primary education.

There is one instance where providing families with economic support is beneficial. That is with the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, where the program provides cash transfer to poor families that place children’s education and health as one of their top priorities. In return for the cash transfers, parents are responsible for sending their children to school and get regular medical checkups. So this is where policymakers and the parents are sort of making a deal. These programs did indeed improve school enrollments, but based on 42 CCT programs in 15 countries from all over the world, in order for CCT to be significantly effective in increasing school attendance, programs must also supply improvements in infrastructures and quality of the schools (Saavedra & Garcia, 2013). It is also shown that CCT programs are more effective if the cash transfers were infrequent. If it is too much, the parents may end up relying too much on the cash transfers and think of cash transfers as a primary source of income.

The school construction program run by the Indonesian government built more than 61,000 primary schools throughout Indonesia. The data shows that the construction of these schools not only increased education, but also wages of those students. The INPRES program increased wages of by up to 2.7 percent for each school built per 1,000 children (Duflo, 2001). It is important to note that the program only increased the quantity of the education, not the quality. But by providing a more accessible education, the Indonesian government was able to increase education levels and income. As this program states, we must first focus on just making education easily accessible. Whether that is by constructing more schools or by providing easier and cheaper transportation. I also thought it might be a good idea to try to make teachers go around small rural communities and teach. As the data in the paper shows, it is not necessarily the quality of the education, but the accessibility of education. If teachers were willing to do this, it would be much easier to reach children all over the map.

Essentially, policymakers have two choices when it comes to improving education in developing countries. They can increase the quantity of schools or improve the quality of the schools that are already there. Of course, in an ideal world, we should try to do both, but it would be foolish of policymakers to do everything at once. Every policy and every improvement must be made one step at a time. The problem is; which step do we take first? According to Behrman, Ross, and Sabot, improving the quality of primary schooling has a higher rate of return than increasing enrollment in middle school (2008). But increasing enrollment in primary schools, even it if it may be of low quality, has a higher rate of return than improving the quality of primary schools. This makes sense because if we were to give every child an equal opportunity to learn and better their lives, it raises the probability of having successful children. But if we give the opportunity of education to only a select group of children, even if it is quality education, there is a lower chance of producing a successful child.

I believe the best possible strategy would be to allow children to attend school while also helping around the house. The parents of these children rely too much on these children to help out. And they cannot risk a decrease in their income even slightly. The best possible way to go about satisfying both the parents’ perspective and the goal of increasing enrollment in primary education would be to figure out how to incorporate both into the children’s lives. We need to convince parents that primary education is essential in guiding their children into a successful future and hope that they would be willing to invest time and money to send their children to schools. We can do this by utilizing the conditional cash transfer programs. And the policymakers must also make sacrifices as well. Schools should take into account that a good majority of the children have intense labor at home. So they should adjust to the child labor that is already set in place at home. They cannot expect families to change their practices of child labor over night especially when, in some families, children generate majority of the income. Along with the CCT programs, policymakers should consider constructing a lot of schools so that children in rural communities do not have to waste their time and money into traveling great distances to participate in primary education. As the data in the scholarly journals stated, although cash transfers are effective in persuading parents to send their children to school, school enrollment is significantly increased if the resources are easily accessible. This way, children from all backgrounds, poor or rich, can have the opportunity to learn. And also, policymakers should consider targeting females for policies relating to primary education. Females are more likely to utilize the information that they learn in school. And as data shows, they are more likely to appreciate education and pass it onto their children as well.

Works Cited

Admassie, A. "Child Labour and Schooling in the Context of a Subsistence Rural Economy: Can They Be Compatible?" International Journal of Educational Development 23.2 (2003): 167-85. Print.

Beegle, K., R. Dehejia, and R. Gatti. "Why Should We Care About Child Labor? The Education, Labor Market, and Health Consequences of Child Labor." National Bureau of Economic Research (2004): n. pag. Print.

Behrman, J., D. Ross, and R. Sabot. "Improving Quality versus Increasing the Quantity of Schooling: Estimates of Rates of Return from Rural Pakistan." Journal of Development Economics 85 (2008): 94-104. Print.

Bharadwaj, Prashant, Leah Lakdawala, and Nicholas Li. "Perverse Consequences of Well-Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India's Child Labor Ban." Working paper, n.d. <http://prbharadwaj.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/childlaborban_102413.pdf>.

Cleland, John. "The Benefits of Educating Women." The Lancet 376.9745 (2010): 933-34. Print.

Duflo, Esther. "Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment." American Economic Review 91.4 (2001): 795-813. Print.

Edmonds, Eric V. "Child Labor and Schooling Responses to Anticipated Income in South Africa." Journal of Development Economics 81.2 (2006): 386-414. Print.

Emerson, P. M., and A. P. Souza. "Child Labor, School Attendance, and Intrahousehold Gender Bias in Brazil." The World Bank Economic Review 21.2 (2007): 301-16. Print.

Fuchs, R., E. Pamuk, and W. Lutz. "Education or Wealth: Which Matters More for Reducing Child Mortality in Developing Countries?" Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 8 (2010): 175-99. Print.

Handa, S. "Raising Primary School Enrolment in Developing Countries The Relative Importance of Supply and Demand." Journal of Development Economics 69.1 (2002): 103-28. Print.

Huisman, J., and J. Smits. "Effects of Household- and District-Level Factors on Primary School Enrollment in 30 Developing Countries." World Development 37.1 (2009): 179-93. Print.

Jain, A. K., and M. Nag. "Importance of Female Primary Education for Fertility Reduction in India." Economic and Political Weekly 21.36 (1986): 1602-608. Print.

Saavedra, Juan, and Sandra Garcia. "Educational Impacts and Cost-Effectiveness of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs in Developing Countries: A Meta-analysis." Working paper, n.d. <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2333946>.

Sherman, J., and E. Muehlhoff. "Developing a Nutrition and Health Education Program for Primary Schools in Zambia." Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 39.6 (2007): 335-42. Print.