Abstract
This chapter focuses on child labour and its interactions with adult labour in Ivory Coast, from the early 1980s to 2002. Its purpose is to analyse the familial determinants of child labour and to determine whether children’s work and parents’ work are substitutes or complements in family labour decisions, using statistical data and models. The existence of a very robust correlation between the child’s economic activity and his mother’s work in rural areas is demonstrated: children are more likely to be economically active when their mother is. This chapter offers some explanations for this result. Poverty can be a plausible explanation, but the model suggests that failures of adult labour market can also be at stake.
I wish to thank the Institut National de Statistiques de Côte d’Ivoire for allowing me to access their data.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Christian Van Den Anker, The Political Economy of New Slavery (Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
- 2.
Amanda Berlan, ‘Social Sustainability in Agriculture: An Anthropological Perspective on Child Labour in Cocoa Production in Ghana,’ Journal of Development Studies 49, no. 8 (2013): 1088–1100; Kevin Bales, Ending slavery: How we free today’s slaves (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Anti-Slavery International, The Cocoa industry in West Africa: A history of exploitation (London: Anti-Slavery International, 2004).
- 3.
Berlan, ‘Social Sustainability in Agriculture,’ 1088–100.
- 4.
European planters tried to introduce a system of compulsory forced labour on their large cocoa plantations, but local communities refused to submit themselves and managed to impose their own labour model.
- 5.
Christiaan Grootaert, ‘“Child Labor in Côte d’Ivoire: Incidence and Determinants,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper (November 1999); Guy B. Nkamleu and Anne Kielland, “Modeling farmers” decisions on child labor and schooling in the cocoa sector: a multinomial logit analysis in Côte d’Ivoire,’ Agricultural Economics 35, no. 3 (2006): 319–33.
- 6.
Sharecropping was a system of farming where a tenant farmer worked a plot belonging to a landowner and received an agreed share of the harvest in payment.
- 7.
In the framework of my doctoral thesis: Laura De Lisi, ‘Les déterminants du travail des enfants en Côte d’Ivoire de 1985 à 2002: exploitation, pauvreté, ou déséquilibres institutionnels? Des formes multiples de dépendance’ (PhD diss., École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2015).
- 8.
The country experienced an unprecedented economic growth between the 1960s and the mid-1980s (the cocoa sector, indeed, constituted the engine of Ivory Coast economic growth and allowed the economy to take off: this period is known as the ‘Ivorian miracle’). The country then experienced a huge political and economic crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and a new period of economic prosperity at the beginning of the 2000s.
- 9.
Child fostering was a widespread practice in West Africa: families frequently placed some of their children with relatives to allow them to attend school or to learn a trade, depending on the opportunities that such relatives could offer. See, for example, Marc Pilon, ‘Confiage et scolarisation en Afrique de l’Ouest: un état des connaissances,’ Background Paper for the 2003 EFA Monitoring report of UNESCO (2003).
- 10.
They were more likely to work, and to work for longer periods of time and in poorer conditions.
- 11.
See, for example, Kaushik Basu and Pham Hoang Van, ‘The economics of child labor,’ American Economic Review 88, no. 3 (1998): 412–27; James H. Grant and Daniel S. Hamermesh, ‘Labor Market Competition among Youths, White Women, and Others,’ The Review of Economics and Statistics 63, no. 3 (1981): 354–60; Charles Diamond and Tammy Fayed, ‘Evidence on substitutability of adult and child labour,’ The Journal of Development Studies 34, no. 3 (1998): 62–70.
- 12.
Elizabeth Katz, ‘Gender and Trade Within the Household: Observations from Rural Guatemala,’ World Development 23, no. 2 (1995): 327–42.
- 13.
See, for example, Jimy M. Sanders and Victor Nee, ‘Immigrant self-employment: The family as social capital and the value of human capital,’ American Sociological Review 61, no. 2 (1996): 231–49; Kimberly Cartwright, ‘Child labor in Colombia,’ in The Policy Analysis of Child Labor: A Comparative Study, ed. Christiaan Grootaert and Harry Anthony Patrinos (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999).
- 14.
International Labour Organization (ILO), Marking progress against child labour – Global estimates and trends, 2000–2012, (2013), www.ilo.org/global/publications
- 15.
Sanders and Nee, ‘Immigrant self-employment,’ 231–49.
- 16.
Claudia Goldin, ‘Household and Market Production of Families in a Late Nineteenth Century American City,’ Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 2 (1979): 111–31.
- 17.
Shahina Amin, Shakil Quayes, and Janet M. Rives, ‘Are Children and Parents Substitutes or Complements in the Family Labor Supply Decision in Bangladesh?’ The Journal of Developing Areas 40, no. 1 (2006): 15–37.
- 18.
Emmanuel Skoufias, ‘Labor Market Opportunities and Intrafamily Time Allocation in Rural Households in South Asia,’ Journal of Development Economics 40, no. 2 (1993): 277–310.
- 19.
Katz, ‘Gender and Trade Within the Household,’ 327–42.
- 20.
As a reminder, the concept of informal sector was introduced into international usage in 1972 by the International Labour Organization: ‘labour relations – where they exist – are based mostly on casual employment, kinship or personal and social relations rather than contractual arrangements with formal guarantees.’ ‘Glossary of Statistical Terms,’ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=1350, date accessed on January 15, 2018.
- 21.
International Labour Organization (ILO), Resolutions Concerning Economically Active Population, Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment Adopted by the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians, October 1982, para. 5.
- 22.
Chris N. Sakellariou and Ashish Lall, ‘Child Labor in the Philippines,’ in The Policy Analysis of Child Labor: A Comparative Study, ed. Christian Grootaert and Harry A. Patrinos (New York: St. Martin Press, 1999).
- 23.
These surveys (conducted in 1985, 1987, 1988, 1993, and 2002) are part of the Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS), a World Bank research program initiated in 1980, whose purpose was to collect data to assist policymakers to identify how policies could be designed and improved to positively affect outcomes in health, education, economic activities, housing, and utilities.
- 24.
Gary S. Becker, Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). It is a standard framework in economic theory for this type of analysis.
- 25.
In this framework, the individual is supposed to make choices (regarding his or her job and the time devoted to it), which will allow him or her to obtain the highest level of well-being (in terms of consumption level and leisure), knowing that he or she is limited by his or her income level and by temporal constraints.
- 26.
Becker, Treatise on the Family; Reuben Groneau, ‘The Intra-Family Allocation of Time: The Value of Housewives’ Time,’ American Economic Review 63, no. 4 (1973): 634–51.
- 27.
Amin, Quayes, and Rives, ‘Are Children and Parents Substitutes or Complements,’ 15–37.
- 28.
Becker, Treatise on the Family.
- 29.
A regression model is a statistical model used to determine the strength of the relationship between one dependent variable (here, child labour) and a series of other changing variables, known as independent variables (here, parents’ economic activity, household poverty, etc.). When multiple variables are introduced in the model, the regression model permits one to determine the specific effect of each variable on the dependent variable, while controlling for other variables. In the perspective of this chapter, it allows us, for instance, to evaluate the impact of the parents’ labour on child labour, while considering the possible effect of household poverty. If women’s labour appears to be ‘significant,’ it means that, even when poverty is taken into account, women’s labour has an impact on child labour.
- 30.
In both cases, I used binary probit models to take into account the fact that the decisions to put children to work or to send them to school are made simultaneously by the household, a result that I have demonstrated in my dissertation (on the same data), De Lisi, Les déterminants du travail des enfants en Côte d’Ivoire. The probit model allows us to deal with qualitative variables (such as child labour or school attendance). It is a type of regression where the dependent variable (here, child labour or school attendance) is binary (the child works vs. the child does not work; the child goes to school vs. the child does not go to school). For details on these kinds of models, see Daniel A. Powers and Yu Xie, Statistical method for categorical data analysis (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2006), and Alan Agresti, Categorical Data Analysis (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Interscience, 2002).
- 31.
ILO, Resolutions Concerning Economically Active Population, Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment.
- 32.
This variable aims to estimate the poverty level of the household. This variable is also constructed dichotomously following Ranjan Ray, ‘Analysis of child labour in Peru and Pakistan: A comparative study,’ Journal of Population Economics 13, no. 1 (2000): 3–19, by sorting the population into quintiles based on the level of consumption expenditures: households that fall into the first quintile of expenditures are considered poor.
- 33.
Girls did not work significantly more than boys, however.
- 34.
The coefficient relating to the mother’s economic activity remained significant at the one per cent level; it was very high and showed little variation as new variables were added (see Table 15.1). This point demonstrates that the result is strong.
- 35.
The coefficient relating to the father’s employment was less significant (at the ten per cent level) and lower.
- 36.
The coefficient relative to the mother’s activity also remained very stable (similar in all four models), which means that the impact of the mother’s activity on child labour was very strong, and did not depend on the household poverty or on the lack of school infrastructure in the area.
- 37.
The coefficient (1.245 in the last model) is the second highest in the regression in absolute value after the one associated with the fact of the father having attended high school (−6.561).
- 38.
Eric Léonard and Patrice Vimard, Crises et recompositions d’une agriculture pionnière en Côte d’Ivoire. Dynamiques démographiques et changements économiques dans le Bas-Sassandra (Côte d’Ivoire) (Paris: IRD-Karthala, 2005).
- 39.
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Les Africaines: Histoire des femmes d’Afrique noire du XIXe au XXe siècle (Paris: Desjonquères, 1994).
- 40.
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Les Africaines.
- 41.
Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie économique des Gouro de Côte d’Ivoire: De l’économie de subsistance à l’agriculture commerciale (Paris: Mouton, 1964).
- 42.
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Les Africaines.
- 43.
Léonard and Vimard, Crises et recompositions d’une agriculture pionnière.
- 44.
Gianna C. Giannelli and Francesca Francavilla, ‘The Relation between Child Labour and Mothers’ Work: The Case of India,’ International Journal of Manpower 31, no. 2 (2010): 232–57.
- 45.
Sustainable Tree Crop Program and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, ‘Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector of West Africa. A synthesis of findings in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria,’ (2002).
- 46.
Nkamleu and Kielland, ‘Modeling farmers’ decisions,’ 319–333.
- 47.
As mentioned earlier, the working hours of children and women are very similar: on average, children work 27 hours per week, while women worked 31 hours per week.
- 48.
These sectors were divided roughly into three subcategories: agricultural sector, employed, and self-employed; the available data do not allow for a more detailed breakdown.
- 49.
Katz, ‘Gender and Trade Within the Household,’ 327–42.
- 50.
I have used tobit models, linear regressions on censored samples, insofar as the working time was filled in only for economically active individuals (for details on these kinds of models, see Powers and Yu, Statistical method for categorical data analysis, or Agresti, Categorical data analysis).
- 51.
In the second case, I aggregated the hours devoted to an economic activity of all of the women 18 years of age or older, who were present in the household.
Select Bibliography
Amin, S., S. Quayes, and J.M. Rives. “Are Children and Parents Substitutes or Complements in the Family Labor Supply Decision in Bangladesh?” The Journal of Developing Areas 40, no. 1 (2006): 15–37.
Bales, K. Ending slavery: How we free today’s slaves. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
Basu, K. and P.H. Van. “The economics of child labor.” American Economic Review 88, no. 3 (1998): 412–27.
Berlan, A. “Social Sustainability in Agriculture: An Anthropological Perspective on Child Labour in Cocoa Production in Ghana.” Journal of Development Studies 49, no.8 (2013): 1088–100.
Giannelli, G.C. and F. Francavilla. “The Relation between Child Labour and Mothers’ Work: The Case of India.” International Journal of Manpower 31, no. 2 (2010): 232–57.
Grootaert, C. “Child Labor in Côte d’Ivoire: Incidence and Determinants.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, November 1999.
Nkamleu, G.B. and A. Kielland. “Modeling farmers’ decisions on child labor and schooling in the cocoa sector: a multinomial logit analysis in Côte d’Ivoire.” Agricultural Economics 35, no. 3 (2006): 319–33.
Van Den Anker, C. The Political Economy of New Slavery. Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendices
Appendices
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
De Lisi, L. (2019). Child Labour and its Interaction with Adult Labour in Ivory Coast (1980–2000). In: Campbell, G., Stanziani, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95956-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95957-0
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)