Does the Timing of Productivity Shocks in Childhood Affect Educational Attainment?

Yuma Noritomo
Additional contact information
Yuma Noritomo: Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, U.S.A. and Junior Research Fellow, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration (RIEB), Kobe University, JAPAN

No DP2025-19, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

Abstract: Poor households in developing countries often face trade-offs between children's schooling and labor. Using data on pastoralist households in rural Kenya and Ethiopia–where livestock require care and generate within-household demand for child labor–I exploit quasi-random variation in rangeland grazing conditions that affects both household income and labor demand to estimate the impact of productivity shocks during childhood on educational attainment. Positive productivity shocks during preschool ages increase completed schooling, primarily by raising the probability of primary school entry, consistent with the relaxation of short-term liquidity constraints. In contrast, negative productivity shocks during primary school ages-when children are most likely to exit school and child labor productivity increases-are associated with higher educational attainment. This effect appears to operate through significant reductions in livestock holdings that lower subsequent demand for boys'labor in animal husbandry and probably reinforce the effect by inducing sedentarization. These results highlight the importance of non-separable household production and human capital decisions in shaping educational outcomes during critical stages of childhood in low-income settings.

Keywords: Human capital; Child labor; Opportunity cost; Agricultural households; Non-separability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 O15 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2025-06, Revised 2026-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2025-19.pdf Revised version, 2025 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2025-19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University 2-1 Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657-8501 JAPAN. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University ().