Child work and schooling in rural north India: What do time use data say about tradeoffs and drivers of human capital investment?

This study examines time use data for 1244 children in the age-group 6-12 years in 274 villages in eight states in rural north India to understand the tradeoffs between time spent in school, time spent at work, time spent on home study and liesure. Using a Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SURE) model, we find that only a few variables influence allocation of time to different activities across the board. Overall, there seems to be no tradeoff between time spent at school and at work, whereas leisure time and home study appear to be compromised for the sake of work.