Determinants of Child Labour Exploitation and its Impact on Their Educational Achievement in South Western Ethiopia Case Study of Jimma Town

Abstract

Ethiopia is characterized by high incidence of child labour and low school enrollment. There is no specialized body with the primary responsibility of mitigating child labour and the existing legal provisions about child rights are far from implementation in every parts of the country. This study was initiated with the objective of identifying determinants of child labour exploitation and its impact on their educational achievement in Jimma town. For the purpose of the study a cross sectional data were collected from 196 sample child labourers and interview is also made with the supervisor of children’s right protection office and other concerned staffs. Primary data from child labourers were collected through structured questionnaire. For the purpose of data analysis, descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, tables), and econometric model were used. For estimating the determinants of child labour OLS estimation technique has been use d after making comparison with tobit model. Two- limit tobit model has been employed for estimating the determinants educational achievement which is measure by cumulative result of student. Result from OLS estimation revealed that child labour exploitation which is measured by child labour hour found to be significantly associated with age of the child, household size, monthly income of child’s parent, sex of the child, educational level of child’s father and parents of the child who takes debit. Tobit regression shows that children’s educational achievement is significantly determined by age of the child, monthly income of child’s parent, educational level of child’s father, marital status of the household head and total working hours of the child per week, while the variables sex of the child, household size, employment status of the household head and educational level of child’s mother found to be insignificant to affect cumulative result. The study recommended that apart from creating awareness in the community about the detrimental effect of child labour exploitation on their physical and mental well being, the long lasting solution to curb the problem of child labour and promote human capital accumulation is overcoming poverty.