The Impact of Public Works Programme on Child Labour in Ethiopia

• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12226
• Author: Yonatan Dinku
• Published date: 01 September 2019

© 2019 Economic Society of Sout h Africa.

South African Journal of Economics Vol. 87:3 September 2019

doi : 10.1111/ saje .122 26

283

THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMME ON CHILD

LABOUR IN ETHIOPIA

YONATAN DI NKU*

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.

JEL Classification: D13, I30, J01, 055

Keywords: Public wor ks programme, safety net, child labour, chil dren, Ethiopia

1. INTRODUCTION

Often child labour is seen as harmful to children. From a human rights perspective,

it deprives children of their right to have leisure time, attend formal school and lead a

healthy life (International Labor Organization (ILO), 2011; The United Nations (UN),

1973). From a development perspective, child labour interferes with children’s education

and impedes their earning potentials in later life (Baland and Robinson, 2000; Udry,

2006). From a public policy perspective, therefore, there is a perception that well-being

returns to the elimination of child labour can be very large.

Traditionally, poverty and associated income shocks are considered the fundamental

causes of child labour. Households use child labour as a survival strategy when other

sources of income are inadequate to meet basic needs (Grootaert and Kanbur, 1995;

Basu and Van, 1998; Fallon and Tzannatos, 1998). In this context, social safety net

programmes that provide guara nteed income sources to poor households are believed to

play a crucial role in reducing household’s demand for child labour. There is an exten-

sive body of empirical evidence that shows conditional cash transfer programmes have

* Corresponding author: Centre for A boriginal Economic Policy Research, The Au stralian

National University, Canberra, Aust ralia. E-mail: yonatan.di nku@anu.edu.au

South African Journal

of Economics

284 South African Journal of Economics Vol. 87:3 September 2019

© 2019 Economic Society of Sout h Africa.

negative effects on child labour (Parker and Skoufias, 2000; Attanasio and Mesnard,

2006; Soares et al ., 2010). Of course, if cash transfer benef its are conditioned on school

attendance, even in the absence of empirical evidence, there is less reason to doubt that

child la bour would be low among b eneficiary households. The more tim e children spend

attending school, the less time they spend on work activities (Ravallion and Wodon,

2000; Beegle et al ., 2009; Nelson and Quiton, 2018).

Although public work programmes have been a popular policy tool in f ighting poverty

in developing countries (Zimmermann, 2014), the evidence that rigorously quantifies

their impact on child labour is limited. It is not clear, both theoretically and empiri-

cally, how they affect child labour. Unlike conditional cash transfer programmes, public

works programmes help shock-prone households build assets and smooth consumption

through direct employment in the construct ion of local inf rastructures (Subbarao, 2003).

Thus, on the one hand, income from the employment of adult household members in

public projects may help meet the basic needs of the family, thereby reducing demand

for child labour. On the other hand, the supply of adult labour to public projects may

create labour shortages in household productions. As a result, children may be required

to perform household tasks.

This paper contributes to the scanty literature on impact evaluation of workfare pro-

grammes by investigating the effect of the public works component of the Productive

Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia (discussed in Section 2). It is of interest be-

cause: with an an nual budget of US$0.5 billion and more than five mi llion beneficiaries,

the programme is the second largest (next to the one in South Africa) in sub-Saharan

Africa (Gilligan et al., 2009). Yet, the country has one of the highest rates of child labour

in Africa. In 2011, for example, 35% of children aged 5 to 14 years were in child labour

(CSA and ICF International, 2012), whereas the average participation rate for the region

was only 21% (ILO, 2013).

Using panel data from the Young Lives survey and applying child fixed effects, the

study finds a significant negative association between child labour and households’ par-

ticipation in the public works programme. Children in beneficiary households are 8.8%

points less likely than their c ounterparts in non-benef iciary households to be involved in

child labour. At the mean level of participation, this is equivalent to a 16% reduction in

the proportion of child labourers. Apart from partially addressing the lacuna in the im-

pact evaluation literature, the findings in this study suggest that, if well targeted, safety

net programmes can help reduce child labour even in the absence of conditionalities on

school attend ance or other child outcomes.

The paper proceeds as follows: Section 2 describes the nature of the public works

programme in Ethiopia. Section 3 provides an overv iew of the prevalence of child labour

in Ethiopia. Section 4 reports the data. Section 5 provides a conceptual framework for

the relationship between public works programme and child labour. Section 6 discusses

the empirical strategy. Section 7 presents the results. Section 8 concludes and discusses

the findings.

2. THE PROGRA MME

Ethiopia has been repeatedly affected by drought and associated food insecurity prob-

lems. For many years, the tradition was responding to the disaster through emergency