Child Labor and Schooling in Bolivia: Who’s Falling Behind? The Roles of Domestic Work, Gender, and Ethnicity

Artículo de publicación ISIWe analyze the role of gender and ethnicity in the work-school tradeoff among school-aged children. We observe domestic chores in Bolivian data and consider them work, finding that girls are 51% more likely than boys to be out of school and working, mostly in domestic activities. For indigenous children the probability is 60% higher than non-indigenous, and indigenous girls are 23% more likely than boys to be out of school and working. A more comprehensive measure of child labor reveals that in countries with large indigenous populations, indigenous girls are most vulnerable to future poverty and exclusion due to low education.D. Kruger received financial support from the Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile and from Chile’s National Science and Technology Research Commission (CONICYT), through FONDECYT Project No. 1070447. D. Contreras would like to thank the funding granted by Iniciativa Cientifica Milenio, “Centro de Microdatos” Proyecto P07S-023-F