Labor force participation and household work of urban schoolchildren in Mexico: characteristics and consequences

Economic Development and Cultural Change

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 122-154

  Binder, Melissa ^a   Scrogin, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHILD LABOR; HOUSEHOLD SURVEY; LABOR PARTICIPATION; URBAN ECONOMY;

MEXICO;

EID: 0033390280     PISSN: 00130079     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/452449     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Alec Fyfe, Child Labour (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Ben White, "Children, Work and 'Child Labour': Changing Responses to the Employment of Children," Development and Change 25 (1994): 849-78.
2. Alec Fyfe, Child Labour (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Ben White, "Children, Work and 'Child Labour': Changing Responses to the Employment of Children," Development and Change 25 (1994): 849-78.
3. Mark Rosenzweig and Robert Evenson, "Fertility, Schooling, and the Economic Contribution of Children in Rural India: An Econometric Analysis," Econometrica 45 (1977): 1065-79; Emmanuel Skoufias, "Labor Market Opportunities and Intrafamily Time Allocation in Rural Households in South Asia," Journal of Development Economics 40 (1993): 277-310.
4. Mark Rosenzweig and Robert Evenson, "Fertility, Schooling, and the Economic Contribution of Children in Rural India: An Econometric Analysis," Econometrica 45 (1977): 1065-79; Emmanuel Skoufias, "Labor Market Opportunities and Intrafamily Time Allocation in Rural Households in South Asia," Journal of Development Economics 40 (1993): 277-310.
5. Felicia Knaul and Susan Parker, "Patterns over Time and Determinants of Early Labor Force Participation and School Drop Out: Evidence from Longitudinal and Retrospective Data on Mexican Children and Youth" (paper presented at the meeting of the Population Association of America, April 2-4, 1998, Chicago); Deborah Levison, "Child Work and Schooling in Brazil's Cities: Lessons from Survey Data" (University of Minnesota, 1997, mimeographed); William Myers, "Urban Working Children: A Comparison from Four Surveys from South America," International Labour Review 128 (1989): 321-35.
6. Felicia Knaul and Susan Parker, "Patterns over Time and Determinants of Early Labor Force Participation and School Drop Out: Evidence from Longitudinal and Retrospective Data on Mexican Children and Youth" (paper presented at the meeting of the Population Association of America, April 2-4, 1998, Chicago); Deborah Levison, "Child Work and Schooling in Brazil's Cities: Lessons from Survey Data" (University of Minnesota, 1997, mimeographed); William Myers, "Urban Working Children: A Comparison from Four Surveys from South America," International Labour Review 128 (1989): 321-35.
7. Felicia Knaul and Susan Parker, "Patterns over Time and Determinants of Early Labor Force Participation and School Drop Out: Evidence from Longitudinal and Retrospective Data on Mexican Children and Youth" (paper presented at the meeting of the Population Association of America, April 2-4, 1998, Chicago); Deborah Levison, "Child Work and Schooling in Brazil's Cities: Lessons from Survey Data" (University of Minnesota, 1997, mimeographed); William Myers, "Urban Working Children: A Comparison from Four Surveys from South America," International Labour Review 128 (1989): 321-35.
8. Myers summarizes four surveys of working children with no independent household data; Levison, "Child Work and Schooling in Brazil's Cities: Lessons from Survey Data," analyzes data from a Brazilian household survey supplemented with questions about children's activities, where the respondent may be either the parent or the child; Dennis De Tray, "Children's Work Activities in Malaysia," Population and Development 9 (1983): 437-55. Rosenzweig and Evenson, and Skoufias use data from India and Malaysia that rely only on parental reports of children's activities.
9. Myers summarizes four surveys of working children with no independent household data; Levison, "Child Work and Schooling in Brazil's Cities: Lessons from Survey Data," analyzes data from a Brazilian household survey supplemented with questions about children's activities, where the respondent may be either the parent or the child; Dennis De Tray, "Children's Work Activities in Malaysia," Population and Development 9 (1983): 437-55. Rosenzweig and Evenson, and Skoufias use data from India and Malaysia that rely only on parental reports of children's activities.
10. Felicia Knaul, "Young Workers, Street Life and Gender: The Effect of Education and Work Experience on Earnings in Colombia" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995); Pamela Reynolds, Dance Civet Cat: Child Labour in the Zambezi Valley (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991).
11. Felicia Knaul, "Young Workers, Street Life and Gender: The Effect of Education and Work Experience on Earnings in Colombia" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995); Pamela Reynolds, Dance Civet Cat: Child Labour in the Zambezi Valley (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991).
12. Reynolds's study of children's time use in Zimbabwe found that 24-hour recall of activities tends to overemphasize self-care activities and errands involving travel and to underreport short spells of play and routine chores compared to direct observations of time use. At the same time, patterns that emerged among different groups were similar, using either technique. Thus the comparisons of time use among groups may be more relevant than the absolute reports of time.
13. According to the 1990 national census, 71% of the Mexican population is urban. For a comparison of our schools sample and national samples, see Melissa Binder, "Family Background, Gender and Schooling in Mexico," Journal of Development Studies (in press).
14. It is relevant to ask whether all children would interpret this question the same way: that is, whether some children report work and others not, even if they were engaged in the same activity. From the range of responses received, children appeared to list any activity for which they received remuneration or in which they assisted an adult who received remuneration.
15. Since the focus of our study is children, all youths 15 years and older were excluded from the sample. Remaining ages range from 9 to 14 years of age.
16. Predicted schooling is derived from a Tobit model using information on interviewed children and their siblings. The educational attainment of children still in school is treated as left censored. See Binder, "Family Background, Gender and Schooling in Mexico."
17. According to a "Gigante" manager in Guadalajara, the supermarket recruits children 12-14 years of age who have their parents' permission and can show evidence of normal progress in school. Baggers wear a store apron but receive no pay other than customer tips.
18. See, e.g., Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Gary Becker and H. Gregg Lewis, "On the Interaction between the Quantity and Quality of Children," Journal of Political Economy 8 (1973): S279-S299; and Nancy Birdsall, "Child Schooling and the Measurement of Living Standards," Living Standards Measurement Study Working Paper no. 14 (Washington, D.C., World Bank, 1982).
19. See, e.g., Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Gary Becker and H. Gregg Lewis, "On the Interaction between the Quantity and Quality of Children," Journal of Political Economy 8 (1973): S279-S299; and Nancy Birdsall, "Child Schooling and the Measurement of Living Standards," Living Standards Measurement Study Working Paper no. 14 (Washington, D.C., World Bank, 1982).
20. See, e.g., Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Gary Becker and H. Gregg Lewis, "On the Interaction between the Quantity and Quality of Children," Journal of Political Economy 8 (1973): S279-S299; and Nancy Birdsall, "Child Schooling and the Measurement of Living Standards," Living Standards Measurement Study Working Paper no. 14 (Washington, D.C., World Bank, 1982).
21. See De Tray (n. 4 above) for a similar discussion of explanatory variables.
22. Log earnings equations explained less variation (about 42%). Since the purpose of the earnings equations is simply to predict (and not explain) earnings, we use the straight earnings equation.
23. J. Heckman, "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection, and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 5 (1976): 475-92.
24. Thomas Mroz, "The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women's Hours of Work to Economic and Statistical Assumptions," Econometrica 55 (1987): 765-99.
25. We handle the potential simultaneity of sibship size and time decisions by using a two-stage least-squares procedure when tests proposed by Richard Smith and Richard Blundell, "An Exogeneity Test for a Simultaneous Tobit Model with Application to Labor Supply," Econometrica 54 (1986): 679-85, suggest its relevance. The sibship size equation is identified by excluding the reference child's gender and including the mother's age at the birth of her first child; first-stage results are reported in table A4 in the appendix. Simultaneity appears to exist only for time decisions involving human capital investments, a result that supports a joint quality-quantity fertility decision, as per Becker and Lewis.
26. We assume that a father's absence is not determined endogenously.
27. Nor are we able to satisfactorily control price differences among the three sample cities, due to perfect collinearity between the identification of Arandas and Tijuana and school quality variables, discussed below.
28. See Mark Killingsworth, Labor Supply (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
29. Deborah Levison, "Household Composition and Early Age Human Capital Formation: Evidence from Brazil on Children's Labor Force Work and Schooling" (University of Minnesota, 1994, mimeographed).
30. For an elaboration of this model, see Melissa Binder, "Labor Force Participation of Children in Mexico: Evidence from Guadalajara, Tijuana and Arandas" (paper presented at the meeting of the Latin American Studies Associ-ation, April 17-19, 1997, Guadalajara, Mexico).
31. As shown in table 3, one of the schools conducted classes in the evenings. The dummy variable for this school alone had a significant effect on the probability of labor force participation and market hours worked. However, these results are likely biased by endogeneity as children who attend night school are likely to do so in order to accommodate their work schedules.
32. The results reported here define substantial household responsibilities for children reporting three or more hours of work. The estimates are similar but weaker when two or more hours of work are used.
33. Derivatives for each variable were calculated separately for all observations. The means of these derivatives are used in the discussion that follows.
34. Levison, "Household Composition and Early Age Human Capital Formation: Evidence from Brazil on Children's Labor Force Work and Schooling."
35. The result is similar for mother's and father's schooling considered separately.
36. The average household spending in a given class sample was ascribed to households that failed to report this information.
37. The proportion of nonreporting households was higher in more affluent school samples, providing some evidence to support the presumption that nonreporting households have higher incomes.
38. See n. 17 above. Thirteen observations were excluded from these two regressions because they lacked information about mothers that was necessary for the 2SLS specification.
39. This possibility was suggested by an anonymous referee.
40. See Binder, "Family Background, Gender and Schooling in Mexico" (n. 7 above).
41. We are making the standard economic assumption that leisure enters positively the utility function of children. As an anonymous referee pointed out, it is certainly possible that some leisure activities-such as watching television-are not particularly edifying developmentally for children. However, in considering present welfare from the child's point of view, it seems reasonable to equate fewer leisure hours with reduced welfare.
42. See Gary Fine, Jeylan Mortimer, and Donald Roberts, "Leisure, Work, and the Mass Media," At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent, ed. S. S. Feldman and G. R. Elliot (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), for a review.
43. See Levison, "Household Composition and Early Age Human Capital Formation: Evidence from Brazil on Children's Labor Force Work and Schooling" (n. 21 above).
44. Given that hours devoted to different activities are simultaneously determined and that the system of time equations is unidentified (since all time equations include exactly the same set of variables) parametric analyses are inappropriate.
45. See W. J. Conover, Practical Nonparametric Statistics, 2d ed. (New York: Wiley, 1980).
46. See n. 10 above.
47. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing out this potential endogeneity.