Does promoting school attendance reduce child labour? Evidence from Burkina Faso’s BRIGHT project

Northwestern Africa

Burkina Faso

Education

Vouchers / Scholarships / School Subsidies

J De Hoop, FC Rosati

2014

de Hoop, Jacobus, and Furio C Rosati. “Does Promoting School Attendance Reduce Child Labor? Evidence from Burkina Faso’s BRIGHT Project.” Economics of Education Review 39 (2014): 78–96.
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Data is available at: https://www.mcc.gov/pages/countries/impact/impact-evaluation-for-burkina-fasos-threshold-program/burkina-faso-threshold-program.

2014

Bright

October 2006 – April 2007 (duration of the intervention)

Improve school participation in rural communities in Burkina Faso.

The program was targeted at children of rural villages in Burkina Faso. The resources for the program were allocated to applying villages based on a village-level index that indicated the number of girls that would likely benefit from the program. The 10 (rural) provinces with the lowest girls’ primary school completion rates were selected to participate in the program.

BRIGHT implemented a package of education interventions in 132 rural villages consisting of two main components: the construction of a primary school and the provision of direct incentives for school participation in the form of school meals for all pupils and take-home rations for female pupils. BRIGHT was allocated to applying villages based on a village-level index that indicated the number of girls that would likely benefit from the program. Within 49 departments, a total of 293 applicant villages were ranked based on this index and within each department, the villages in the top half of the ranking were selected for the program.

• School Attendance, School Participation
• Child Labour (economic activities and household chores)

Regression Discontinuity Design

Study design: villages were assigned to the BRIGHT program based on a numerical score (or a forcing variable). Within each department, only the villages ranking in the top half of the distribution were selected for the BRIGHT program. This assignment procedure implicitly introduces a threshold in the forcing variable within each department. The authors exploit these thresh-olds in a regression discontinuity framework to identify the causal effect of the BRIGHT program on child work. The intuition behind the regression discontinuity design is that villages with a forcing variable just below the threshold score are similar to villages with a forcing variable just above the threshold. These villages, therefore, serve as a valid control group to measure the impact of the BRIGHT program.
Sample: the final sample consists of 132 rural villages and children from 360 schools evaluated.
Survey Instrument: Data were only collected at the end of the program, there is no baseline available. The household survey, which was conducted with the head of household or another knowledgeable household member, contained one section collecting general information on the household (religion, ethnicity, etc.) and the house in which it resides (construction materials, water source, etc.). The survey also collected specific information on all 5–12-year-old children in the household, including sections on their participation in education and work. In addition, a school questionnaire was administered to the household survey in the spring of 2008. First, all schools that children from the village attended regularly were identified based on information provided by the village elders. Within each village the three schools nearest to the center (maximum distance of 10 kilometers) were incorporated in the school survey, resulting in a sample of 360 schools.

While BRIGHT substantially improved school participation, it did not reduce it may have increased – children’s participation in economic activities and household chores.

Child Labour

Households

Local

The BRIGHT program seem to have contributed to the increase children’s participation in economic activities and household chores.

While school subsidies may reduce the time and the monetary costs of education in Burkina Faso, it may not be enough to decrease child labour or increase school attendance.

The results suggest that if education programs are implemented to achieve a combination of increased school participation and a reduction in child work they may either have to be combined with different interventions that effectively reduce child work or they may have to be tuned more carefully to the incentives and constraints the child laborer faces.