The Impact of Urban Poverty on Child Labor: The Case of Arba Minch Town, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Although urban child labor is a considerable issue, it has attracted little attention in previous studies. As a result, child labor in most of the medium and small towns remains unstudied. In addition, the previous literature suggests that the impact of poverty on child labor are largely country specific, indicating that any policies aimed at reducing child labor must look carefully at country specific characteristics that expose children to work.  This study is conducted in one of unstudied areas, Arba Minch town, and its main objective is to examine the impact of urban poverty on child’s school participation in the study area. This research adds to the empirical work on child labor by investigating what household, parental and children characteristics are most common among working children in the study area, using primary data collected from selected kebeles of the town via structured questionnaire, and analyzed with the use of both descriptive and econometric tools of analysis. The multinomial logit model was employed with child activity as the dependent variable, where the four possible outcomes are working-only, schooling-only, combination of work and schooling, and leisure time. The finding show that poverty (proxied by  family per capita income) has a slightly weaker negative impact on the likelihood of a child works full time relative to schooling-only category, as do the engagement of  household head on stable income generating economic sectors. Being son or daughter to the household head has a significantly positive effect on the probability of a child participating in schooling-only category. In addition, the findings show that incidence of child labor versus schooling depends on (among other factors) age, gender, and education level of a child; household size, ownership of tap water directly in the house and home ownership; age, gender, and educational level of the household head; presence of elderly person and infants in the household.  From policy perspective, measures directed at expanding stable income generating employment opportunities and house ownership for the poor are of immense importance in reducing child labor. In addition, family planning, mainly concerned with the spacing and timing of births, and strategies that enhances old age welfare benefit may have an important role to tackle child labor in the town.

Keywords: Arba Minch, child labor, income and asset poverty, multinomial logit model