Addressing Social Desirability Bias When Measuring Child Labor Use: An Application to Cocoa Farms in Côte d’Ivoire

Marine Jouvin
Additional contact information
Marine Jouvin: BSE - Bordeaux Sciences Economiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Abstract This paper proposes new estimates of child labor use in Côte d'Ivoire's cocoa farms that are certified free of child labor. The study relies on list experiments (LE) to overcome social desirability bias associated with measuring sensitive issues, implemented on a sample of 4,458 Ivorian cocoa farmers. Findings show that 24 percent of them were helped by at least one child under 16 for harvesting and breaking the cocoa pods during the past 12 months, 21 percent for preparing their farm, and 25 percent employed and paid at least one child to perform any task on their cocoa farm. These results are twice as high as those declared by farmers when directly questioning them about their child labor use. This study provides evidence that the LE method, while more cognitively demanding than the direct questioning method, can be successfully understood by populations with low levels of education. Findings further show that, in this setting, the LE estimates are robust to specific LE design changes.

Date: 2023-09-19
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in World Bank Economic Review, 2023, ⟨10.1093/wber/lhad030⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-04240549

DOI: 10.1093/wber/lhad030

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().