Working Paper: NBER ID: w26190
Authors: Eric V. Edmonds; Caroline B. Theoharides
Abstract: Productive asset grants have become an important tool in efforts to push the very poor out of poverty, but they require labor to convert the asset into income. Using a clustered randomized trial, we work with the Government of the Philippines to evaluate a key component of their child labor elimination program, a $518 productive asset grant directed at families with child laborers. Treatment increases household based economic activity. Household well-being improves, mainly through increases in food security and child welfare. Households achieve these improvements in well-being by drawing upon the labor of household members. Adolescent labor is the most available labor, and we observe increases in employment among adolescents not engaged in child labor at baseline. Households with a family firm or business prior to treatment especially lack available adult labor to work with the asset leading to increases in child labor, including hazardous work, amongst children who were not in child labor at baseline.
Keywords: child labor; productive asset transfer; randomized controlled trial; Philippines; household wellbeing
JEL Codes: J22; L26; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| kasama intervention (D74) | increased household-based economic activity (D19) |
| kasama intervention (D74) | family firm activity (J54) |
| kasama intervention (D74) | household wellbeing (I31) |
| kasama intervention (D74) | food security (Q18) |
| kasama intervention (D74) | increased child labor (J82) |
| increased household-based economic activity (D19) | increased child labor (J82) |
| not in child labor at baseline (J82) | increased economic activity (F69) |
| nonfarm businesses (R33) | increased economic activity among adolescents (J13) |
| pre-existing nonfarm business (R33) | increased hazardous child labor (J82) |