The Spillovers of Employment Guarantee Programs on Child Labor and Education

Tianshu Li and Sheetal Sekhri

No 9106, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Many developing countries use employment guarantee programs to combat poverty. This paper examines the consequences of such employment guarantee programs for the human capital accumulation of children. It exploits the phased roll-out of India's flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) to study the effects on enrollment in schools and child labor. Introduction of MGNREGA results in lower relative school enrollment in treated districts. The authors find that the drop in enrollment is driven by primary school children. Children in higher grades are just as likely to attend school under MGNREGA, but their school performance deteriorates. Using nationally representative employment data, they find evidence indicating an increase in child labor highlighting the unintentional perverse effects of the employment guarantee schemes for Human capital.

Keywords: Education Finance; Economics of Education; Educational Sciences; Labor Markets; Child Labor Law; Labor Standards; Rural Labor Markets; Child Labor; Educational Institutions&Facilities; Effective Schools and Teachers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01-07
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Journal Article: The Spillovers of Employment Guarantee Programs on Child Labor and Education (2020)
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