Does Child Labour Affect School Attendance and School Performance?Multi Country Evidence on SIMPOC data

This paper provides evidence on the the impact of child labor on child schooling.The limited evidence that does exist on this issue makes little or no attempt to control for the endogeneity of child labour hours in the estimation.Such endogeneity can arise because of the reverse causation of child labour by learning dis advantage and lack of necessary intrinsic skills. The present study is conducted on the data sets of Belize,Cambodia,Namibia,Panama,Philippines,Portugal and Sri lanka, that were collected under the SIMPOC programme of the ILO.The study,that seeks to control for the endogeneity mentioned above, provides extensive evidence of the damage done by child labour to the child's education right from her point of entry to the labour market.A lone and significant exception is provided by the Sri Lankan results.The Sri Lankan evidence suggests a cut off point in the range of(approximately) 12-15 hours a week beyond which child work impacts negatively on the child's learning. This evidence is supportive of ILO Convention No. 138, Art. 7(b), which stipulates that "light work" may be permitted as of the age of 12 provided it does not "prejudice attendance at school".This is howvever not true of the evidence from other countries.One result that all the data sets agree on is the strong positive role that adult education plays in promoting the child's learning.