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Income Shocks and Child Labor: Evidence for the Rural Dominican Republic

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Child Labor in the Developing World

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Abstract

Child labor is a social problem with economic consequences for the growth and development of countries in the short and long term, affecting children’s physical and mental development because it interferes with their future wages. This article aims to assess how negative income shocks and economic assets are associated with child labor in the Dominican Republic. This issue is particularly important in the rural area, which is more prone to exogenous shocks and has fewer tools to mitigate them. The microdata from the Encuesta Nacional de Hogares de Propósitos Multiples (ENHOGAR) are used for 2010. The empirical strategy was to use a bivariate probit for considering that the decision to work and study is interdependent. The results show that the assets positively affect the child’s decision to study. On the other hand, negative household income shocks increase the choice of working. Finally, this chapter brings important results for the formulation of public policies aimed to effectively prevent and eradicate child labor in rural areas.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This econometric model was also used in the works of Cerdas (2003); Sapelli and Torche (2004); Cacciamali, Tatei and Batista (2010); and Mesquita (2011) with similar purposes.

  2. 2.

    Cluster analysis aims to group sample elements according to some measure of similarity (social, geographical, economic and so on). Such grouping is performed so that the variability within the groups is the smallest possible, while the variability between the groups is maximized.

  3. 3.

    The transfer programs analyzed are aimed to encourage education, food and health in children and in beneficiary families.

  4. 4.

    See table in the annex.

  5. 5.

    See table in the annex.

  6. 6.

    It is important to emphasize that the signal of the marginal effects is the same of the estimated coefficients, thus not interfering in the interpretation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), Viçosa, Brazil

    Eva Rodríguez Cuevas & Lorena Vieira Costa

Authors
  1. Eva Rodríguez Cuevas
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  2. Lorena Vieira Costa
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Finance & Marketing, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Alberto Posso

Annex

Annex

Table 5.4 Description of the variables in the bivariate probit model
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Table 5.5 Descriptive statistics of the main explanatory variables of the model (Dominican Republic, 2010)
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Table 5.6 Impact of variables on child labor decision and school attendance, by sex of the children (Dominican Republic)
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Table 5.7 Impact of variables on child labor decision and school attendance, by age group (Dominican Republic)
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Cuevas, E.R., Costa, L.V. (2020). Income Shocks and Child Labor: Evidence for the Rural Dominican Republic. In: Posso, A. (eds) Child Labor in the Developing World. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3106-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3106-4_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-15-3105-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-3106-4

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