Parental Educational Attainment and Child Labor: Evidence From Malawi

Abstract

This paper examines child labor response to parental education. Prior studies present anecdotal evidence with a causal interpretation of this relationship rarely explored. Hence, conditional on a range of parental characteristics and multigenerational co-residence, I use as a set of instruments grandparents’ educational attainment to exploit plausibly exogenous variation in parents’ schooling. I generally find evidence of a negative parental education impact on child labor outcomes. The effect of maternal education on household farm work, however, is not significant. With respect to potential mechanisms, the results suggest that engagement in nonfarm employment pursuits among educated parents may mediate these effects.