The Economic Ripple Effect of Parental Education and Child Labor in Malawi: Does a Mother's Education Matter for Child School Attendance?

The Economic Ripple Effect of Parental Education and Child Labor in Malawi: Does a Mother's Education Matter for Child School Attendance? | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article The Economic Ripple Effect of Parental Education and Child Labor in Malawi: Does a Mother's Education Matter for Child School Attendance? Nzabirinda Etienne This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6202910/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract This study investigates the economic spillover effect of parental education on school attendance and child labor in Malawi, focusing on maternal education. Using data from the World Bank and the Malawian Integrated Household Survey (IHS), the study employs the Linear Probability Model (LPM). The findings show that the average age of children is 11.42 years, with 89% attending school. Child work reduced minimally from 47–45% from 2019 to 2020 for home farm work, while casual part-time activity increased from 18–20%. The LPM estimates indicate that educational attainment of mothers increases child work with a coefficient of 0.305 (p < 0.01) implying an increase of child work by 30.5% with every additional unit of years of education of mothers. Also, paternal education reflects a coefficient of 0.301 (p < 0.01) for the joint sample and 0.308 for males to suggest that paternal education has caused increased child labor, mostly for children. Paternal education reduces child farm work (-0.026, p < 0.05) and casual work (-0.023, p < 0.01). Instrumental variable sensitivity test shows that maternal education reduces labor (coefficient of -0.015, p < 0.01) and has a minor positive effect on school attendance. The findings show that paternal education is more effective in reducing child labor and raising education. Policy implications are to increase maternal and paternal education, increase financial support, improve school infrastructure, and enforce child labor law. JEL Classifications : O12; O15 Child labor parental education school attendance Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Online Appendix is not available with this version Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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Using data from the World Bank and the Malawian Integrated Household Survey (IHS), the study employs the Linear Probability Model (LPM).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe findings show that the average age of children is 11.42 years, with 89% attending school. Child work reduced minimally from 47–45% from 2019 to 2020 for home farm work, while casual part-time activity increased from 18–20%. The LPM estimates indicate that educational attainment of mothers increases child work with a coefficient of 0.305 (p \u0026lt; 0.01) implying an increase of child work by 30.5% with every additional unit of years of education of mothers. Also, paternal education reflects a coefficient of 0.301 (p \u0026lt; 0.01) for the joint sample and 0.308 for males to suggest that paternal education has caused increased child labor, mostly for children. Paternal education reduces child farm work (-0.026, p \u0026lt; 0.05) and casual work (-0.023, p \u0026lt; 0.01). Instrumental variable sensitivity test shows that maternal education reduces labor (coefficient of -0.015, p \u0026lt; 0.01) and has a minor positive effect on school attendance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe findings show that paternal education is more effective in reducing child labor and raising education. 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