School attendance and child labor: Evidence from Mexico’s Full-Time School program

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of a program that extended the length of the school day from part-time to full-time in Mexico, on school enrollment, time spent on schooling activities, as well as market and excessive domestic work of children aged 7 to 14. We further analyze possible spillover effects within the household focusing on older siblings and parents. To identify the effect, we take advantage of the staggered implementation of the Full-Time Schools (FTS) program across municipalities from 2009 to 2018. The results show that the FTS program has no impact on school enrollment, but increases the weekly hours allocated to schooling activities, and at the same time reduces child labor hours. A one standard deviation increase in the share of FTS reduces the probability of engaging in child labor by 0.9 percentage points, which implies a 12% reduction in child labor.