A Micro Analysis of Child Labour and Poverty Linkages in North-Central Nigeria
- December 23, 2018
- Posted by: RSIS
- Category: Economics
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume II, Issue XII, December 2018 | ISSN 2454–6186
A Micro Analysis of Child Labour and Poverty Linkages in North-Central Nigeria
Ogebe, F.O
Department of Agricultural Economics, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria.
Abstract: The study was conducted to establish the relationship between child labor and poverty in North central Nigeria by relating child work decisions and household poverty gap. Structured questionnaire was used as research instrument to generate data from 300 households and 600 children between the ages of 5-14 years in the study area. Both descriptive and Heckman two-step model were used for the analysis. The study finds that children work mainly as a result of household poverty, poor access to social services, household labor demand and supply situation and socialization. Type of work the child is involved in follows residential location of the household, sex of the child, predominance of informal sector, and access to infrastructure and services such as water supply and energy source. The study established that child work in different activities relates to household poverty differently and that child work emerges both as a survival strategy and also socialization process and that child work plays both complimentary and substitution roles to adult labor. The study further revealed that child characteristics of age and sex were found to significantly affect child work decisions in different activities. Implying that as children are growing, they develop their skills in most of the activities done by their parents in the informal sector thereby making almost perfect substitutes for their parents’ labor and making them more susceptible to work. Furthermore, parameter estimates for sex of the child showed that girls work for more hours than boys in all activities. The study recommends poverty reduction , improvement in access to education facilities, water supply and energy sources, and anti-child labor campaigns which should be implemented as a package as policy intervention for eradicating child labor.
Keywords: Child, Heckman, labor, Nigeria, Poverty, urban
