Simultaneous Decision Making of Child Schooling and Child Labour in Pakistani Urban Households

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a rapidly expanding literature on child labour that provides empirical evidence on its nature and determinants. The previous literature on Pakistani child labour includes Khan (1982), Hussain (1985), Ahmed (1991), Khan and Ali (1991) and Weiner and Noman (1995), and recently Addision, et. al. (1997), Burki and Fasih (1998), Ray (2000a), Ray (2000b), Ray (2001) and Ali and Khan (2003). Some studies (see for instance Khan 1982; Ahmed 1991) discuss mainly the qualitative features of child labour. The recent literature has focused attention on the quantitative aspect, taking advantage of the increasing availability of good quality data on child labour. Within the empirical literature on child labour, there has been a shift in emphasis from more quantification to an econometric analysis of its determinants. As child labour is seen to result from the same variables influencing child schooling but in inverse, so school enrolment is strongly correlated with child labour. Child labour commitments are major reasons for children’s non-participation in school. So the literature has moved to incorporate child schooling and child labour and thus analyses schooling and child labour jointly (see for instance, Degraff et. al. 1993; Mahmood et. al. 1994). The present study is one of this category.