Abstract
Using cross-sectional data and employing probit models, the paper investigates child school
attendance and labour in Morocco. Results indicate that education is a luxury good which can be
purchased more easily by the non-poor. Moreover, a child is more likely to be in school if he/she is
residing in an urban area and is the son/daughter of the head of the household. However, the Body
Mass Index (BMI) - used to account for the impact of proper nutrition status on attendance probability -
deters school attendance. More detailed empirical evidence is obtained by estimating the same type of
models on gender based subsamples. Poverty status, household size and the provincial average of time
taken to travel to school in minutes lessen the probability of female school attendance. If a female child
lives in a household headed by a female, the pupil should have higher likelihood of school attendance.
Besides being a quite common result, this occurrence can be employed to devise a policy initiative of
disbursing to the female head a monetary or in-kind transfer devoted to pupils education which can be
most cost-effective in closing the gender gap as required by the second Millennium Development Goal
(MDG). The probability of a male going to school is limited by the significant role of some regional
location dummies and living with an aged household head. The variables which are significant in both
single-genders models generate higher probabilistic effects for females compared to males.
As expected, the child labour models estimate coefficients which are most of the time opposite in sign
to the ones in the educational. The variable which is consistently associated with a negative influence
on the dependent variable is the age of the household head. The significance of the yearly per capita
expenditure in the child labour investigations might be driven by some endogeneity or the inclusion of
asset variables. Besides the econometric problem, it undermines the confidence attached to the
implementation of a cash/in-kind transfers devoted to curb child labour and promote school attendance.
Industry localization effects and complementarity in within-household labour choices are present. The
investigation carried out on gender-specific samples finds a inverted U shaped female trajectory in age
probably due to early pregnancy. Moreover, poverty condition improves males probability of working
while it diminishes female s school participation.
Lingua originale | English |
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Numero di pagine | 56 |
Stato di pubblicazione | Pubblicato - 2008 |
Pubblicato esternamente | Sì |
Keywords
- Morocco
- child labour
- gender bias
- probit models
- school attendance