Health Shocks and Child Time Allocation Decisions by Households: Evidence from Ethiopia

Yonatan Dinku (), David Fielding and Murat Genc

No 1705, Working Papers from University of Otago, Department of Economics

Abstract: Little is currently known about the effects of shocks to parental health on the allocation of children’s time between alternative activities. Using longitudinal data from the Ethiopian Young Lives surveys of 2006 and 2009, we analyze the effect of health shocks on the amount of children’s time spent in work, leisure and education. We find that paternal illness increases the time spent in income-generating work but maternal illness increases the time spent in domestic work. Moreover, maternal illness has a relatively large effect on daughters while paternal illness has a relatively large effect on sons. Overall, parental illness leads to large and significant increases in the amount of child labour as defined by UNICEF.

Keywords: parental illness; child labour; Ethiopia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 I12 I21 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2017-04, Revised 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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http://www.otago.ac.nz/economics/otago642356.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Health shocks and child time allocation decisions by households: evidence from Ethiopia (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:otg:wpaper:1705

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