Impact of Child Labour on School Attendance and School Attainment: Evidence from Bangladesh

Rasheda MS Khanam, University of Sydney

This paper uses data from Bangladesh to examine household decisions involving child schooling and child labor. Using a multinomial logit model, we first estimate the determinants of household’s decision to put the child one of the four states - "study only", "work only", "combining study and work", and "neither work nor study" for 5-17 year old children. The paper then looks at the impact of work on child’s current school attendance and school attainment using logit model. Multinomial logit results show that the education of parents significantly increases the probability that a school-age child will specialize in study. The significant and positive gender coefficient suggests that girls are more likely than boys to combine schooling with work. However, the central message from this study is that child labor adversely affects the child’s schooling, which is reflected in lower school attendance and lower grade attainment. School attendance suffers most compared to grade attainment.