This article analyses gender differences in children's nutrition and access to health care in Pakistan with a view to uncovering parents motives for the favouring of sons in South Asia. It is found that, among 0 to 5-year-old children, boys are favoured in the allocation of health care. However, girls appear as nourished as or better nourished than boys. This is taken to be evidence that intra-household gender discrimination has primary origins not in parental preference for boys but in differential returns to parents from investment in boys and girls.Pakistan, Gender differences, Children's nutrition, Gender discrimination, Health care, Parental preference,

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Household Access to Microcredit and Child Work in Rural MalawiGautam Hazarika Sudipta Sarangi The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit company supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ABSTRACT Household Access to Microcredit and Child Work in Rural MalawiThis paper examines the effect of household access to microcredit upon work by seven to eleven year old children in rural Malawi. Given that microcredit organizations foster household enterprises wherein much child labor is engaged, this paper aims to discover whether access to microcredit might increase work by children. It is found that household access to microcredit, measured in a novel manner as self-assessed credit limits at microcredit organizations, raises the probability of child work in households with sample mean values of land ownership and number of retail sales enterprises. It appears this is due to children having to take up more domestic chores as adults are busied in household enterprises following improved access to microcredit.JEL Classification: J22

This article examines young adult migration from non-metropolitan counties to either different non-metropolitan counties or to metropolitan areas. The results show that expected gains in initial earnings provide young entrants to the labor force with a marked incentive to migrate from their non-metropolitan counties of origin. Initial earnings gains stem, in part, from higher returns to schooling in both metropolitan areas and other non-metropolitan counties. The propensity to migrate is also sensitive to the costs of migration, which, in turn, are correlated with paternal education and the local presence of extended family. Copyright 2001, Oxford University Press.

This paper examines gender differences in the sensitivity of primary school enrollment to the costs of post-primary schooling in rural Pakistan. Of all measures of the costs of schooling, only distance from primary school is found to be a statistically significant determinant of female primary school enrollment. In contrast, of all measures of the costs of schooling, only distance from middle school is a statistically significant determinant of male primary school enrollment. This has the policy implication that, of measures to ease school supply constraints, improving access to primary schools, not post-primary schools, will reduce the present gender imbalance in rural Pakistani primary school enrollment.

A conventional argument in the child–labour debate is that improvements in access to schools are an effective way to reduce the labour force participation of children. It is argued that schooling competes with economic activity in the use of children's time, and enhanced access to schools, interpretable as reduction in schooling costs, may raise school attendance at the expense of child labour. In this article, we draw a distinction between child labour within the household (intra-household) and child work in the labour market (extra-household), and examine the separate effects of schooling costs upon these two types of child labour in rural Pakistan. Consistent, at least in part, with our theoretical framework, we find that extra-household child labour and schooling costs are positively related whereas intra-household child labour is insensitive to changes in the costs of schooling. Our results suggest that reduction in schooling costs will have limited success in the abatement of child labour in rural Pakistan.