This is the repository for my MSc Thesis in Public Policy and Human Development.
The title of my thesis is "Child Labour in Agriculture: A Response to Climate Change?". As the title suggests, I investigate whether there is a causal link between the progress of climate change and the prevalence of agricultural child labour. More specifically, I ask whether exposure to negative effects of climate change influences agricultural household's decision, whether to allocate their children's time to work on the family farm.
The project consists of two somewhat separate sections, one theoretical and one empirical in nature.
The theory section presents a general equilibrium model of child labour in agriculture, using an adapted form of the agricultural household model Singh et al.. Introducing a productivity scaling factor, representing climate, this model is able to generate testable hypotheses about the effects of a climate-related production shock on the household's choice variables including the amount of child labour supplied. I solve this model and disucuss its merits and limitations.
The case study brings the model to the real world, testing its implications on data from Nigeria specifically. The case of Nigeria is a particularly relevant one for three reasons. First, Nigeria is the country with the most child labour in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and a highly agriculturalistic economy, which allows for a good fit for my study. Secondly, Nigeria is emblematic of the greater SSA context. SSA is the only world-region where child labour is not decreasing. Moreover, more than eighty percent of working children in SSA work in agriculture, underpinning again the relevance of this research project. Thirdly, with relatively well-financed and established survey tools, Nigeria provides the data necessary for an in-depth causal analysis of the kind proposed here.
In the empirical part of my thesis, several datasets are used. The relevant individual, household, agricultural and community-level data comes from the first three panel waves of the Nigerian General Household Survey, which is available via the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Studies (LSMS) catalogue.