Child labor disrupts education, but there is scant research on the reciprocal relationship: education disrupting child labor. We examined the link between school quality and child cocoa agricultural labor in a sample of 2168 fifth-grade children from forty-one primary-schools in rural Côte d’Ivoire. Children attending a higher quality school were less likely to work on a cocoa plantation. Specifically, quality infrastructure and teaching materials were associated with reduced cocoa labor, but not with domestic and economic work. Against the backdrop of a global focus on improving education quality, and 2021 being the International Year of Elimination of Child Labor, we suggest that investments in quality education may serve the dual purpose of reducing child labor alongside improving children’s learning outcomes.
Child Labor in Côte d'Ivoire: Incidence and Determinants
