The report assesses labour market conditions in the new state of South Sudan (officially the Republic of South Sudan). It highlights a number of key challenges faced by the new country in ensuring adequate livelihood opportunites for its population. The overwhelmingly rural labour force is...

Using data from BRIGHT, an integrated program that aims to improve school participation in rural communities in Burkina Faso, we investigate the impact of school subsidies and increased access to education on child work. Regression discontinuity estimates demonstrate that, while BRIGHT...

Recent years have seen a sustained progress in the fight against child labour. The current global economic and financial crisis can potentially reverse the positive trends observed in several countries and further aggravate the problem in regions such as Sub Saharan Africa where the phenomenon...

The study addresses the comparability of child labour estimates produced by different common household survey instruments. This question has important implications for credibility of published estimates of child labour, and for the reliability of current survey instruments as tools for...

This paper aims to begin to fill in the gap about the possible role of school quality in affecting household decisions relative to children’s work and school attendance. While from a theoretical point of view, we would expect school quality to be an important determinant of household...

The study assesses trends in children’s involvement in employment and schooling in Andhra Pradesh over the eleven-year period from 1994 to 2005. Considerable progress was made in getting children out of employment and into school over this 11-year period: children’s involvement in employment...

The paper analyzes the effect of different shocks on household decisions concerning children’s involvement in work and school in rural Cambodia. We assess the differential impact of three different types of shocks using propensity score matching and double difference estimates extended to the...

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and ILO Convention No. 182, two of the main international legal instruments relating to child labour, both recognise children’s right to be protected from forms of work that adversely affect their health and development, regardless of whether this...

This paper uses micro data from the Brazilian PNAD between 1981 and 2002 to ascertain the role that local labor demand – proxied by male adult employment in the area of residence - plays in shaping the work and schooling decisions of children aged 10-15. Contrary to the widespread view that...