The Impact of Public Works Programme on Child Labour in Ethiopia

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.

The Role of Stomach Infrastructures on Children’s Work and Child Labour in Africa: Systematic Review

“…Gender variation among children in the household are also an important factor for heterogeneity in child labour outcomes. Among eleven (n = 11) studies included in the current review which reported reduction in child participation in labour, four studies reported that in-kind and cash transfers reduced participation for boys [46,50,51] than for girls, and one study reported reduced participation of both boys and girls in labour due to transfer programs [45]. The remaining eight (n = 8) studies did not report genderrelated variation on effects of social transfer programs on child labour.…”

“…Finally, with regards to paid work outside the household, among 27 studies included in the review, twelve (n = 12; 44.4%) studies [33,37,38,43,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] reported a decline in decline in children's involvement in paid work outside the household; from these, five studies [38,48,51,52,54] reported significant results. Additionally, one study reported significant decline in children's involvement in paid domestic work outside the household is reduced by 7.7% [36](p < 0.000).…”

“…The impacts of social transfer on child labour vary by the age group and gender of children. Among studies included in the current review, age-specific child labour outcome has been reported in most studies, and child labour has been reported increasing with an increase in child age [34,36,51,53]. This implies that older children are more likely to participate in child labour than younger children, which social transfer programs need to consider.…”

“…The impact of a social transfer program also varies with the form of activities in which children are involved, such as farm work, child work outside the household (paid and unpaid), and household chores. Among studies reporting a reduction in child labour and child work, seven studies reported a decline in children's involvement in work (either paid or unpaid) outside the household [33,45,[50][51][52][53]63]; two studies reported a decline in child labour in household activities [42,58]; and two studies reported a decline in extensive child labour on farms due to social transfers [45,46]. However, in terms of child labour and child work forms, these lists are not exclusive, as a decrease in household activities, labour outside the household, and child work on the farm has been reported to a varying degree in most studies.…”

Contribution of National Rural Employment Guarantee Program on Rejuvenation and Restoration of Community Forests in India

“…Thus, innovative dimensions of PWPs have emerged with the sole aim of achieving extra goals. Add-on interventions, such as capital infusion, training and mentoring, and behavioral therapy components are being inculcated into PWPs to improve the quality of labor supply and develop programs into more or less permanent initiatives so as to attain social protection goals, e.g., restoring dignity, reducing child labor and gender inequality (Dejardin, 1996;Holmes and Jones, 2011;Rimki, 2012;Ehmke, 2015;Kumar, 2017;Gehrke and Hartwig, 2018;Dinku, 2019;Mission Directorate, 2021) and maintaining social and political stability, particularly in fragile states (Mvukiyehe, 2018). This new image given to PWPs leaves only a thin commonality between all PWPs−they are all poised to (1) minimize persistent poverty through provision of low-wage employment opportunities for the vulnerable poor and at-risk youths, and (2) create or upgrade (repair) community assets e.g., social and economic infrastructure (The World Bank, 2009;Mvukiyehe, 2018).…”