Do young children prohibit mothers from working? A study in the Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

Theoretical work relating economic effect of children suggests that labor market participation decreases for mothers with large number of young children and increases when children are adults. The majority of empirical studies find results consistent with this expectation, but there are some studies which fail to confirm this theoretical prediction for the developing countries. This paper used data from a household survey of rural and urban married women to test the theoretical prediction that labor market participation decreases for mothers with large number of young children and increases when children are adults. Results show that when all households are considered, children seem to have positive effects on the probability of the mother’s work participation. However, when household lifecycle and rural-urban location differences are considered, coefficients are negative (but not statistically insignificant) for urban households with large number of young children and positive (and statistically significant) for those households with more adult children; whereas for rural households, these coefficient signs are reversed. Results from the quantitative data combined with qualitative narratives suggest that large numbers of young children do not prohibit rural mothers from working.

No One Size Fits All. Women Commercial Farm Employment and Fertility in Ethiopia: A Study of Saudi Star and MERTI Agricultural Development Farms☆

“…Boserup (1985) and Caldwell and Caldwell (1987) argue that in addition to their labor input, children in sub‐Saharan Africa demand little child care, allowing the mother to spend her time on work. Using data from the Amhara region, Desta (2018, 2019) argued that young children not only contribute to domestic chores, but they also encourage the mother to work away from home by taking care of much of the domestic chores.…”

“…As regards the demographic, sociological, and psychological literature, the value of children—which could be economic (e.g., their labor contribution on own business or farm, income from child labor, and old age support) or non‐economic (including sociocultural or psychological values)—and the compatibility between maternal work and childrearing in the developing countries especially in the face of preponderance of informal employment is widely discussed (Arbache, Kolev, and Filipiak 2010; Boserup 1985; Caldwell and Caldwell 1987; Desta 2018, 2019; Kim and Aassve 2006). Boserup (1985) and Caldwell and Caldwell (1987) argue that in addition to their labor input, children in sub‐Saharan Africa demand little child care, allowing the mother to spend her time on work.…”

Resources, Time and Gender: Determinants of Women’s Housework in Bahir Dar and Nearby Rural Villages, Northwest Ethiopia

“…This appears reasonable for the developed countries, where, for example, there are formal childcare services and a clear separation between childcare and other activities. In the Ethiopian context, the poor, subsistent economy and traditional society mean that childcare is inseparable not only from housework but also even from most market work, especially, in the informal sector (see e.g., Desta, 2017). Housework is accomplished as a joint task, where one person takes care of the housework and manages children at the same time.…”

The Profile of Female Labor Force Participation in Malaysia Based on Recursive Partitioning Analyses

“…Many previous studies, which wanted to see the relationship between participation in labour force (response variables) and other estimator variables, have chosen to use logistics techniques in their analyses (Norehan et al, 2012;Faridi and Rashid, 2014;Nor Amna A'liah and Rusmawati, 2014;Suhaida and Mohd Faizal, 2014;Desta, 2017). This is because the technique is suitable for a binary data that have only two levels, for example working or not working (Agresti, 2002).…”