Parental absence and child labor in vietnam

With determination to find out the relationship between child labor and parental absence, this study examine the impacts of parents and household characteristics on the probability of ch

HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES

VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

PARENTAL ABSENCE AND CHILD LABOR

IN VIETNAM

BY

NGUYEN NGOC MINH THU

MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

HO CHI MINH CITY, November 2017

HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE

VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS

VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

PARENTAL ABSENCE AND CHILD LABOR

IN VIETNAM

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor Dr Nguyen Hoang Bao of the Vietnam – The Netherlands Programme (VNP) at Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics I much appreciate for all his dedication, his guiding, supporting, and patience to my study He has set a great example of a teacher, researcher, especially for me

I would like to express my gratitude to the VNP officers who were involved in my thesis process by updating thesis schedule and providing good condition for my research process Without their passionate participation, the thesis process could not have been successfully conducted

Finally, thanks are also due to my classmates for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis This accomplishment would not have been possible without them Thank you

Nguyen Ngoc Minh Thu

Ho Chi Minh City, November 2017

ABSTRACT

Child labor is defined as a task which had took out the childhood from children; have

an ability to affect negatively on child physical and mental development These tasks also obstruct child schooling by disposing child from the chance of learning at school or force them to leave school early In a worst form, child labor contains child who serve as slaves, has been splitting with their parents, high opportunity to get serious illness and have to protect themselves on the street (International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) ILO (2013) also estimated about one – third of the child labors in Vietnam, or around 569,000 children have to work around 42 hours per week in 2012 and this will have a bad influence on child schooling or children have to stop completely schooling time for work

This paper uses a panel data built up from VHLSS 2012 with descriptive statistics of parents and children characteristics to determine whether parent’s absence is a main reason for child labor We apply Probit and OLS regression, as well as Heckman selection model, to examine the impacts of parents’ characteristics on the probability of child working and working hours

The main finding of this study emphasize that parent’s absence is not a key factor lead

to child labor It is economic factors and poverty that play an important role in leading child labor status and child working hours

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 3

ABSTRACT 4

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 8

1.1 Child labor 8

1.2 Parents time for children 11

1.3 The Impaction of Parents on child labor 12

1.4 Research objective 12

1.5 Structure of the thesis 13

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 14

2.1 Review of theory: 14

2.2 Effect of parents on children’s skill development 19

2.3 Effect of Parents on children education 20

2.4 Effect of parents on children’s labour 20

2.5 Effect of poverty on child’s labor 21

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 Conceptual framework: 22

3.2 Child labor status (working or not) – logit model 24

3.3 Child working hours – multiple linear regression model 25

3.4 The logit model Error! Bookmark not defined 3.5 Heckman selection model 27

CHAPTER 4: EMPIRICAL RESULTS 28

4.1 Overview of child labor problem in Vietnam 28

4.2 Data: 30

4.3 Empirical results 41

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 47

5.1 Conclusion 47

5.2 Policy implications: 47

REFERENCE 49

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Variable description of child working or not regression 24

Table 2: Variable description of child working hour regression 26

Table 3: Descriptive Statistics of children’s variable 31

Table 4: Descriptive Statistics of father’s variables 32

Table 5: Descriptive Statistics of mother’s variable 33

Table 6: Frequency of social-demographic characteristics 34

Table 7: Child’s working general information 35

Table 8: Parents living in family characteristics by child labor status 39

Table 9: Parents income characteristics by child labor status 40

Table 10: Parents illness characteristics by child labor status 40

Table 11: Regression result 43

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Child labor affects the nation, source: Srinivas Viswanathan, 2014 8

Figure 2: Global Incidence of Child Labor, 2000 to 2012, source: Our World in Data 9

Figure 3: Incidence of Child Labor between 5 SEA countries, 2000 to 2012, source: Our World in Data 10

Figure 4: Incidence of working children who work only in five SEA countries 11

Figure 5: The relationship of household, parent and child characteristics to child labor 23

Figure 6: Vietnam child population by age group and gender, source: Vietnam National Child Labor survey, 2012 29

Figure 7: Frequency of child labor status by gender 36

Figure 8: Frequency child labor status by ratio of educated child in household 37

Figure 9: Percentage working status of child by first child in household status 37

Figure 10: Frequency of child labor status by child’s reasoning to hospital 38

Figure 11: Percentage working status of child by father living together status 38

Figure 12: Percentage working status of child by mother living together status 39

Figure 13: Frequency of father education level by child labor status 41

Figure 14: Frequency of mother education level by child labor status 41

CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Child labor

Cigno and Rosati (2005) has announced that children all over the world are related to

a large number of activities which could be able classified as work These activities include a large range of activities, from less harm for children as home activities to the most damaging job as soldiering or prostitution

ILO (2013) has estimated in World Report that 265 million cases of child labor have been found, which is nearly 17 per cent of children all over the world According to this report, the highest number of child labor happened in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ospina & Roser, 2014)

Most of child labor cases has found in developing countries where children often work under manufacturing or agriculture factors According to ILO’s Statistical Information and Monitoring Program, agriculture is the sector in which child labor could be found the most Edmonds and Pavcnik (2005) has estimated that in Nepal, 85% of child labor is in agriculture, Cambodia 73% and in Morocco 84%

Figure 1: Child labor affects the nation, source: Srinivas Viswanathan, 2014

Viswanathan (2014) presented the figure that child labor is undesirable because of its negative affect on the nation as a whole As indicated in Figure 1, child labor would disturb

child schooling time and also their cognitive development This would affect child’s professional expertise and their soft skill which will lead to poor wage later in their working age Low wage caused bad working environment and poor labor standards These conditions will lately cause poor income or even unemployment when children grow up

Figure 2 presented child labor aged 5-17 which has been reduced from 23 per cent on

2000 to 17 per cent on 2012 (Our World in Data, n.d.) From 2000 till 2012, the number of child labor around 78 million which has reduced almost one-third The ratio of reducing in girl labor as 40 per cent while the ratio falling in boy labor is 25 per cent From 2008-2012, the reducing in child labor is greater than 2000-2008, among of that, the Asia and Pacific region has contributed the large number of reducing on fours year 2008-2012 (Making progress against child labor- Global estimates and trends 2000-2012, 2013)

Figure 2: Global Incidence of Child Labor, 2000 to 2012, source: Our World in Data

Together with South Sudan and Suriname, Vietnam has been listed in 74 countries which have serious problem of child labor by the US labor Department (List of goods produced by child labor and forced labor, 2016) In the same report, most of Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand are included in the list Our World in Data (n.d.) has shown as Figure 3 the Incidence of Child labor figure a trend of child labor which aged from 7-14, however the figure do not show all the result at the same

time so that the dot line presents as: Cambodia has the rapid reducing from the beginning of around 60 per cent to 11.5 per cent of child labor in 2012, Vietnam also have a large decreasing from more than 20 per cent on 2006 to 10.9 per cent in 2012, Thailand: 15.1% of child labor in 2005-2006, Philippines has a small different from 2001 to 2011 as their number

of child labor in beginning is already low around 12% on 2001 to 9% on 2011 Lastly, Indonesia have a stable trend on child labor from 2000 to 2009 and drop incredibly on 2010

Figure 4: Incidence of working children who work only in five SEA countries 1.2 Parents time for children

Result of nation-wide survey on the family in Viet Nam 2006 (2008) estimated about

28 per cent of mother confirmed that they spend around three hours per day caring for their children under 16 years old While 29.6 per cent of father said that they spend less than one hour per day with their children In addition, 6.8 per cent of mother and 21.5 per cent of father disclosed that the most reason that lead to their lack of time is working for living

Consider this case by location, mothers in urban have more time to spend with their child than ones in rural As an illustration, the ratio of urban mother who spend more than three hours per day is 38.8 per cent, while the ratio of rural areas is 24.7 per cent For ranking, the most time was spent to take care children belong to the southeast area, follow that are women in the Northwest and Central region

Vietnam News released the fact that 7 per cent mother confess that they spent less or even no time with their children, for father, this ratio as one fifth This issue even has higher ratio in poor, rural households Comparing by gender, father spend six times lower than mother for taking care of their children younger than 16 (Children the losers in modernisation, 2008)

According to Jesper Morch, Unicef representative in Vietnam, it is not the problem of whether they want to care children or not, parents have to face a trade-off situation of spending time between working for household survival and caring children Parents have to work for family survival so that they do not have time spending with children and parents have higher level of education and better income could have more time to childcare (Family undergoing major shifts in Viet Nam, shows first-ever nationwide survey on the family, 2008)

Moreover, Ms Mania Zaman, Deputy Representative of UNICEF, also mention in her speech that Vietnamese parents have to handle pressure of long hours working for competition in the labor market Others research also confirm that in most of developing countries, parents have to spend more time on related working activities for income than child care (Speech at the launch of the Survey of the Family in Viet Nam by Ms Maniza Zaman, Deputy Representative of UNICEF, 2008 )

1.3 The Impaction of Parents on child labor

Parikh (2005) has shown their research on children attribution between schooling and working time with the chance of trade off provided by their parents in Brazil One of the main finding of the research is that children whose have parents are self-employed or employers are more likely to work than those whose parents are employees, regardless of working sectors One more important finding is children might not have to face with trade-off between working and schooling as it counts on parents occupation

Francavilla (2007) found in her study about relationship between child labor and mother’s work in India Children benefits as schooling time move same side with the percentage of the presence of mother in family, but the children working time move opposite side with this factor The research also indicates that if mother stay home and take care of children, the family wealthy depend on father work, other side, if mother have to work for living, the percentage of child labor would be increased

1.4 Research objective

Parents always play a very important role on raising child; have a strong influence on children development With determination to find out the relationship between child labor and parental absence, this study examine the impacts of parents and household characteristics

on the probability of child labor, especially focusing on time living with parents

1.5 Structure of the thesis

The remaining of this thesis included four chapters:

 Chapter 2: Literature review included five main parts which the first three parts study about parents influence on three sides of children: skill development, education, labor The others study on how poverty effect on child labor and empirical model from

previous research

 Chapter 3: Research Methodology will presents about building data and this study empirical model

 Chapter 4: present about regression result, and discussion

 Chapter 5: Conclusion, the implication, the limitation, and the further research direction of this study

CHAPTER 2:

LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature review presented how previous researchers’ analyse which factors affect to child labor among children characteristics and household characteristics This chapter included five sections with the first part shows prior research methodologies and their empirical models All the three next parts focus on how parents affect child skill development, child labor and child education based on previous theories The fifth part target

on the conclusion from previous paper about how poverty influent child labor

2.1 Review of theory:

Basu and Van (1998) present a basic model of child labor with considers on H households with every family include one adult and one child The household’s preferences are described as:

{(𝑐, 𝑒)| 𝑐 ≥ 0, 𝑒 ∈ {0,1}}

Which c presented for family member consumption, e is child work with values 0 or 1 only Adults always work in this assumption regardless adult wage Child and adult are consider have equal consumption for simplifier analysis Suppose family just send child to labor market when and just when each individual’s consumption lowers than certain exogenously fixed subsistence level, s With all 𝛿 > 0

(c, 0) > (c + 𝛿, 1) if c≥ 𝑠 (c + 𝛿, 1) > (c, 0) if c< s The family will choose c and e to maximize the family preference based on below budget constraint:

important number s, where child will join the labor market if income from non-child labor below s It would be easier to examine (1) from utility function when (2) the labor market do not have part time job, child will either work or not work in this market (3) there are just two household rule: send child to work or not

To examine this, the paper assumes the household maximize utility as below which u

is household utility, c is total household consumption and e denotes child decision which e =

0 is child not working and e=1 is decision to work :

(c-s) (1-e), if c ≥ s u=

c-s, if c < s Present the child wage in the market is wc, the household budget constrain formula as:

c ≤ w + mewc

If the household want to maximize u, regard to the above formula, by assigning for c

≥ 0 and e ∈ {0,1} , (1) will become true

The theoretical framework of Basu (1999) has been the basis for many empirical studies With focusing on child only, Portner (2016) analyze the mutual influence or a trade-off between child and adult household member activities as:

𝐻𝑖𝑗= ∝𝑗+𝛽𝑗𝐼𝑖 + 𝛾𝑗𝑍𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗 The study show the main focus on his research is determining how household characteristic effect on children‘s time using in Philippines data with all the activities are classified in four parts as: domestic work, market work, school and leisure

With

𝐻𝑖𝑗 : the hours spent in an activity j by individual i

∝𝑗, 𝛽𝑗, 𝛾𝑗 : coefficients to be estimated

𝐼𝑖 a vector of individual characteristics, 𝑍𝑖 a vector of household characteristics

𝜀𝑖𝑗 are residuals that are independently and normally distributed, with mean zero and

a common variance

Child activities are classified into four kinds as: domestic work, non-paid job, market work and school and leisure activities Domestic work includes all the household activities to save time for parents working Domestic work, therefore, includes all the activities associated with house care and maintaining Non-paid job consists of all kind of productivity work, at home or else, which are not paid Market work is defined as activities with salary School activities combined tasks children have to process relate with education Leisure is the kid free time and does activity which is not a part of three before activities type

In Portner (2016), for the household characteristics, data was collected as: education which has three levels: three-five years education, finished primary school, more than primary school; land properties with: land owned, land rented/leased, parental absence For child characteristics: age and gender are collected for this research

The main finding of this research is mother absent, girls would have more effected than boys with the girls school time would be decline In case of father absent, boys would spend more time on working in the market and this time is a trade off from leisure or domestic work With the land ownership, boys would have more time on schooling activities

In contrast, girls would be reducing their time on school if family renting land

One side effect of mother’s power on her child’s labor is examined by a collective model (Iliana Reggio, 2005) His data based on the survey of Mexican family life With the great amount of Mexican households, the research shows that if the power of mother increases, the child labor would be reduced

The paper assumes that children will not able to make decision in household so the household utility would be presented as:

W = 𝜃𝑈𝑚(𝑋, 𝑍, 𝜖) + (1 − 𝜃)𝑈𝑓(𝑋, 𝑍, 𝜖) The above equation has: X are all parents value, Z are all characteristics which could

be observed and 𝜖 are unobserved one, mother’s utility presented by 𝑈𝑚 and 𝑈𝑓 shows father’s utility

The mother’s weight of decision in household presented by 𝜃 which chosen from 0 to

1, in maximum case 𝜃 = 1, the household’s utility is the mother’s utility Follow this, the household optimization issue implies the maximization of

W = 𝜃𝑈𝑚(𝑥𝑚) + (1 − 𝜃)𝑈𝑓(𝑥𝑓) − 𝑐(ℎ)

xm and xf are certain preferable good from parents and working hour of parent is fixed c(h) is child utility through their cost function The outcome shows that mother’s power has negative impact on child labor when she has less power than her husband or child labor working hours will decrease if mother’s power in house hold increase

In the research of all the factors have affection with child labor, Abdul (2010) regress all the related factors such as: household income, child income, household head education status, household head characteristic to find out how socio economic and demographic element effect on child labor : A case study for the fishing sector on Balochistan coast aim to analyse the effect of socio economic and numerical aspects on how labor work in the fishing industry of Pakistan

To demonstrate the relationship of child labor and variables of household

characteristics, below equation is regressed:

PCL = α0 + α1LPCINC + α2GEND + α3DGOVSER + α4CHINC + α5EDUST +

α6DPVTWORK + α7PERD + α8DFISH + α9PCLED + α10AGE + α11CLEDU +

α12WHRCHLAB + α13AGEC + μ1

With PCL expressed a percentage of child labor in household, LPCINC is a log of household per capita income, CHINC expressed child income, EDUST household head education status, PERD is household head periodicity of earning, DFISH demonstrate dummy of working in fishing industry of household head, DGOVSER is dummy of working

in government services of household head, DPVTWORK is dummy of private work of household head, GEND is gender of household head, AGE present for household head age, AGEC is age of child labor, PCLED is percentage of educated child labor in the house, CLEDU present for child education levels and WHRCHLAB present for working hours of children

The paper shows the result 30 per cent of the children are involved in fishing in the coastal areas about It is observed that the main cause of child labor is not poverty it comes out to be low quality of education, lack of job opportunity, and lack of development

Alam (2015) uses a linear model in his research to analyse the impacts of family member’s health status on both hours spent for work and school attendance of child in Tanzania by using a linear – OLS model:

With result nearly same as previous research mentioned this paper shows an evidence

of child might not have a trade-off between child educations and schooling though father absence or illness will lead to a child school attendance decrease The reason for this decreasing might be because of household income lower when father absence/ illness and household could not afford for child education In contrast, mother absence or illness does not effect on child schooling in regard to this paper

Amarakoon Bandaraa, Rajeev Dehejia b and Shaheen Lavie-Rouse (2015) determine the influence of income and non-income shocks on child labor with data was collected from Tanzania These paper shows that agriculture decrease or collapse would have a higher effect

on boys than girls In contrast, crop shocks would lead to more than 70% probability of quitting school In addition, boys market work hours and girls household works would be time reducing in case house hold have a bank account Girls also would have less working hours because of assets but this paper do not find any information relate to assets for boys

Another side approach from Moehling (2004) consider the role of family structure to child development in the American South by classified child to black and white To simplify the case, the research assumed there are two type of family, intact and non-intact, he also found the significant correlation between family structures with child labor

The research shows the special strong effect on black child if child do not live with one or both parents, the result would be reduce on schooling activities and increase on

working in the market However, the paper also shows that order factor such as: household resources, adult literacy… would have a stronger contribution to the child schooling and labor than family structure

Bangladesh, M Najeeb Shafiq (2007) in their research “Household schooling and child labor decisions in rural” try to investigate how household make their decision on child education and labor with data collected from rural Bangladesh The paper shows that two

factors might have a great contribution to reduce education activities and increase child labor

is poverty and low education level of parents In addition, household have the same decision behaviour for all children regardless of gender They also find one more reason to encourage household send their child to the market is child wages

These papers have been focused more on parent’s influence and poverty This chapter presents five parts as:

1 Effect of parents on children’s skill development

2 Effect of Parents on children education

3 Effect of parents on children’s labor

4 Effect of poverty on child’s labor

5 Empirical model

2.2 Effect of parents on children’s skill development

It has been mentioned by Bloom, 1991; Bornstein & Bruner, 1989; Feurestein, Klein,

& Tannenbaum, 1991; Tomasello, 1992; Wertsch, 1985; Wood & Middleton, 1975 the cognitive and language development of children have been connected and affected by the communication between children and their care givers All the above research showed that it

is not a matter of who care givers are, it is the matter of the quality of care For more details,

in the research of Friedman & Cocking, 1986; Hart & Risley, 1995, the quality of care is measured by how the care givers react to the children’s demand and their body’s indication with the positive response, language communication and social activities (National Institute

of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, 2000) The research also extend the results from previous research by displaying the differences between child in centre-care and home care Children at home care performed lower than children at centre-care

Amato and Rivera (1999) contribute proof on the affection of father to children’s behaviour Their research shows the negative relationship of child’s problems and father care

In addition, step father will remain a same impact on child’s behaviour as father This finding consists with other previous research as step father might become an important resource for children’s behaviour (Amato, 1994a; Bogenschneider, 1997)

Cardoso et al (2010) mentioned in his papers the role of parents in Italy and German

is the role of parents in both Italy and German has been emphasized; the role of mother on children activities is highlighted

2.3 Effect of Parents on children education

Ilahi (2005) and Emerson and Souza (2011) had presented the relationship between child labor and their income: child who worked earlier in their childhood would have lower income than the one who work later Furthermore, in some recent papers with have focused

on others characteristics, the positive correlation between later wage and education such as: test scores have been pointed out (Beegle, 2009 and Dumas, 2012)

From the education view, Claus C Po¨rtner (2016) presented a strong correlation of girl’s school time decreasing when mother absent The number of large reducing around 26 hours per week of girls’ school time is also showed in this research This statement is also mentioned by Ainsworth et al., (2005) who found that it would be a decrease continuously in

a time preceding the loss of parent and after the loss, it would be a strong reducing from school time

In addition, Alam (2015) examined about the effect of parental illness on children education The outcome proof that just father’s illness impact and reduce children‘s school time, moreover, father absence also has a long term effect on children education Another important outcome from this research is there is no proof for father’s illness affect children schooling time by increasing children working time

The issue of father absence is also mentioned by McLanahan and Sandefur (1944) with the result of less school attendance records, lower school scores than the child living together with two parents With the same result, many previous research prove that children living with mother only are tend to quit school, have children out-of-wedlock, get obstacles in working at their young –adult years (Haurin, 1992; Haveman and Wolfe, 1995; Kiernan, 1992)

2.4 Effect of parents on children’s labour

According Claus C Portner (2016), parent will allocate time spending of children on schooling, working or others activities This research also presents proof of higher possibility

of boys’ spending time on market activities when father absent, nearly 10 hours longer than boys have father live together However, consider as girls side, just one hour higher for

working time of absent father and without an absent father Another contribute of this paper

is the role of mother, according to some evidence, mother education increase might lead to time spending on domestic work of her daughter increase But this trend would be reverse as

if mother even has higher education and her daughter would decrease time of working

In addition, another result from Abdul Hai et al (2010) explain that household will send children to work to maximize their utility only, if household could maximize their utility without working children, they will not send children to work With connecting with previous papers, parents think that schooling is not beneficial as working skill learning at young age Even in some areas, skill training would be considered as more adequate than schooling

One of key factor for child labour is poverty according to Bandara et al (2015) Others factors would be household characteristics This result also have the same idea with Basu and Van (1988) which is poverty is lead to child has been sent to work There is a certain point of adult wage which household will send child to work if the adult wage is lower than this point

2.5 Effect of poverty on child’s labor

Poverty play an important role to force child to a labor market, furthermore, child labor is likely more increase in a society where it’s characterized by poverty and inequality Child is tend to work more in a household where even small contribution is important

Another view from Kaushik Basu and Pham Hoang Van (1998) defined children work is a luxury good Children of the non-poor parents less work than the one have poor parents Parents will also with draw their children from the labor when they have ability to afford this From others view, children non-work is a luxury good so that the poor house hold cannot afford to buy this good but they will buy it as soon as their income higher

non-Another factor might affect the child labor is traditional of family If a family have a traditional of parents participate in labor market at young age, child in family would follow their parents (Abdul Hai, 2010)

CHAPTER 3:

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

To analyse the impacts of household and parents characteristics on child labor, this study uses two dependent variables: child labor status (working or not) and working hours of children

For a labor decisions, Kaur (2002) conclude that house hold income performs a key factor to the child labor status Furthermore, this factor has a negatively impact to child labor status, the child labor will increase if the house hold income decrease and vice versa

Shafiq (2007) also suggest the same result which household poverty and parent lower education would lead to higher child labor status and reduce child schooling

Another important factor which also is considered as an influence component by previous research is parent absence Portner (2016) has found out the specific relationship between parents and their child as: girls would get more obstacles from the absence of mother together with the reduction of school time, boys would spend more time on working if father

do not live together with him

Moehling (2004) also concluded that “Living apart from one or both parents was associated with lower school attendance and greater labor market participation”

Portner (2016) mentioned in his research that boys would increase his time spent on working because of the absence of father Moreover, he believe that there is no trade-off between school time and working time of child

Besides variables mentioned above, in this research we also included child characteristics such as the order of child in house, is the child first child or not

3.1 Conceptual framework:

Regards to theoretical and empirical reviews, parental absence might be one of the important factors affect child labor However, the decision between send child to labor market or not also be influenced by others factors such as individual parents characteristics, child characteristics and household level Parent characteristics include: no of months living

in house, income per year, age, inpatient cost, working hours per month Household level factors might affect child labor include: gender of household head, child characteristics is

combined by: school subsidy for child, first child in household or not, ratios of educated child

in household, no of child in household, child gender, out-patient times of child, in-patient times of child, child school cost The conceptual frame work is presented as below:

Ratios of educated child in household

No of child in household

PARENTAL ABSENCE AFFECT TO CHILD LABOR

CHILD LABOR

Figure 5: The relationship of household, parent and child characteristics to

child labor

3.2 Child labor status (working or not) – logit model

Logit model of this study to analyse the impact of mentioned factors to child labor status is expressed as the following equation:

In this study, the equation would be:

Probability of working or not = 1

Income per year YIncome1 million =0,1,2,3,4…

Working hours per

Independent

variable

Mother characteristics

No of months

Income per year YIncome2 million =0,1,2,3,4…

Working hours per

School subsidy for

First child in

Ratios of educated child in household RatioofEC

=0,1/4,1/3,1/2,2/3,3/4,

4/5,1

Where Zi= 𝛽1 No of child in household + 𝛽2 First child in household or not + 𝛽3 Ratio

of educated of child + 𝛽4 Months of father living in house + 𝛽5 Months of mother living in house + 𝛽6 Father Working hours per months + 𝛽7 Father yearly income + 𝛽8 Age of father +

𝛽9 Mother yearly income + 𝛽10 Father Inpatient Cost + 𝛽11 Mother Inpatient Cost + 𝛽12

Mother age + 𝛽13 Mother Working hours per month + 𝛽14Gender of household head + 𝛽15

School subsidy for child + 𝛽16 Child gender + 𝛽17Out Patient Times of Child + 𝛽18In Patient Times of Child + 𝛽19Child school cost+ u

When holding others factor fixed, the change of dependant variable one unit, the change in log-odd is β1 or β2 or β3… β15 unit After defined β, we could forecast the odd-ratio and the probability of child labor status: working or not

For the “Working or not variable”, we turn 1 = yes for any cases of children have work days greater than 0, in contrast is 0 = not working

For “Gender of household head”, we just keep any cases have relationship with household head are husband or wife

A ratio of educated child in household is created by number of educated children divide total of children in household

Based on ILO, the minimum age for working could not lower than the age of finishing compulsory education – 15 years old, the higher age usually named as: responsibility age In regard to this information, the study analysed children from 6-15 years old Age of six is the age for starting schooling of children

3.3 Child working hours – multiple linear regression model

To analyse how all the factors affect child working hours, we use the linear model as below function:

Working hours = y = f (Z)

No of child in

Out Patient Times

In Patient Times

Child school cost SchCost million =0,1,2…126

Child working hours per year = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ChildAge + 𝛽2 Number of Child in household + 𝛽3 Ratio of educated of child + 𝛽4 Months of father living in house + 𝛽5 Months of mother living in house + 𝛽6 Father yearly income + 𝛽7 Father yearly income + 𝛽8 Age of father + 𝛽9

Age of mother + 𝛽10 Father Inpatient Cost + 𝛽11 Mother Inpatient Cost + 𝛽12 household head gender + 𝛽13 Child gender + 𝛽14 Child Out Patient Times + 𝛽15 Child In Patient Times + u

𝛽0 is the intercept

𝛽1 is the parameter associated with Child Age

𝛽2 is the parameter associated with Number of Child in household, and so on

The variable u is the error term; display all others variables affect dependent variable beside independent variables listed as below

Table 2: Variable description of child working hour regression

Income per year YIncome1 million =0,1,2,3,4…

Working hours per

Mother characteristics

No of months

Income per year YIncome2 million =0,1,2,3,4…

Working hours per

Household characteristics

Gender of

Child characteristics

Child wage per

Ratios of educated child in household RatioofEC

=0,1/4,1/3,1/2,2/3,3/4,

4/5,1

No of child in

The equation as above presents the relationship between child working hours per year and all the independent variables β1, β2, β3… β15 are the slope parameters address the relationship of child working hours and the dependant variable go together with them When holding others factor fixed, the change of dependant variable one unit, the change of independent variable is β1 or β2 or β3… β15 unit

3.4 Heckman selection model

Because the working hours of childrent has a large proportion of zero values as many children do not work, the OLS estimates may be biased The appropriate models for this type

of dependent variable is Tobit or Heckman selection model We use Heckman selection models to estimate the working hour of child based on the sample of working child since the working child is not the random sample

The Heckman model includes two equation, regression model and selection model with step 1 as logit model of participation utilizing all observations, step 2 with the regression equation will be estimated using OLS The model is express as below:

Regression equation: Y1*=Working hours = y = f (Z)

Selection equation: Y2= PXi= 1

1+e −βXi+ui

Y1 = Y1* if Y2>0

Y1=0 if Y2<=0 where Y1* is observed and Y1 is the latent variable In the Heckman selection model, the two equations are estimated simultaneously

Out Patient Times

In Patient Times

on 1999-2002 which object is children under poor condition of living, homeless or working

in dangerous situation; National Programme of Action for Preventing the Issues of Street Children, Sexually Abused Children and Children Working in Hazardous Environments on 2004-2010 is aim to decrease the 10 per cent quantity of children live on the street and children working in unhealthy situation and help 70% of those return back and living with their families

4.1 Overview of child labor problem in Vietnam

Child laborers defined by Vietnam National Child Labor Survey 2012 include: children from 5-11 years old, work or relate to economic activities one hour or more per day and five hours or more per week, children from 12-14 years old, work or relate to economic activities four hours or more per day and twenty four hours or more per week

Figure 6: Vietnam child population by age group and gender, source: Vietnam National

Child Labor survey, 2012

In the first National Child Labor survey 2012 has been presented in Figure 5, published on March 2014, around 9.6 percent children (1.75 million) who age from 5-17 in Vietnam are workers and 40.2 percent are female This means two in every five of them working in the situation that fit with the child labor description Almost 85 per cent child labor live in rural area, 55 per cent do not go to school and majority of them work in Agriculture sector (67 per cent) Concerning on the working reason, one-third of them have pushed to work and small amount select to work and learn how to trade Nearly 32.4 per cent work more than 42 hours per week and the amount of time extending in work limit the schooling time which lead to reason child have to drop school