Parents’ labour force participation and children’s involvement in work activities: evidence from Thailand

Abstract

This study provides a better understanding of children's engagement in economic work and housework by examining its relationship with parents' labour force participation. It also explores how parents' employment type is associated with children's involvement in work activities. Using Thailand's Labour Force and Time Use Surveys, our multivariate probit regression results show that girls actively participate in economic activities when their mothers are employed, while boys' involvement in such work is positively correlated to both parents' employment. Girls' housework participation is also positively associated with parents' employment, suggesting that their assistance in household chores enable their parents to stay in the labour market. These positive relationships are prevalent particularly among children with either mothers or fathers working informally. Hence, the findings suggest that anti-poverty or expansionary policies aimed at increasing labour force participation without attention to job quality, social protection and care needs can adversely affect children by increasing their need to work.

Childhood Construction: Intergenerational Relations in the Afghan Refugee Community Living in Pakistan

“…Parents of street children are often employed in the informal labor market. Nasir et al (2021) and Yokying and Floro (2020) show that parents' participation in the informal labor market has a positive correlation with their children working in this labor market too. This means that if parents live in poor social conditions, they will force their children to work to fulfill their filial responsibility.…”

Trade-Off Between Schooling and Labor for Children: Understanding the Determinative Factors Among Rural Households in Bangladesh

“…Some works analyzed household demographic factors (Grootaert and Kanbur, 1995 ; Basu and Van, 1998 ; Salmon, 2005 ; Huisman and Smits, 2009 ), while others extensively focused on socio-cultural factors and the intra-household demand and supply of labor (Delap, 2001 ; Bhalotra and Heady, 2003 ; Emerson and Souza, 2003 ; Mukherjee and Pal, 2016 ; Hoque, 2021a ). Several empirical findings indicate that parents engaged in labor-intensive occupations tend to trade off schooling with child labor in various localized contexts (Bhalotra and Heady, 2003 ; Haile and Haile, 2012 ; Yokying and Floro, 2020 ).…”