Mobile Money and School Participation: Evidence from Low Income Countries

Valentina Rotondi and Francesco Billari

No 109, Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of using mobile money technology on children's school participation in low-income societies. We argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money technology reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We test this hypothesis using a set of comparative samples from seven low-income countries. We find that mobile money technology increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to the use of estimation techniques that deal with possible endogeneity issues. We also show that the effect of mobile money is mainly driven by African countries and that, at least for girls, it is significantly higher when the household is living below the poverty line.

Keywords: Mobile money; School; Child Labor; Technology; Digital Revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-mfd and nep-pay
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