Papers by Christelle Dumas
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published i... more Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. 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 organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. 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 intereste...
This paper addresses the relationship between schooling and socioeconomic background, in particul... more This paper addresses the relationship between schooling and socioeconomic background, in particular parents' education. We use an original survey conducted in 2003 in Senegal that provides instruments to deal with the endogeneity of background variables. These instruments describe the environment in which parents lived when they were ten years old. The estimated effect of father's education more than doubles when its endogeneity is accounted for and, unexpectedly, becomes much bigger than the impact of mother's education. We focus on the understanding of the channels through which parental education affects children's schooling and present results pointing at the role of parental education in shaping parental preferences for the education of their offspring. Finally, we present empirical evidence suggesting that family background has as much impact after entry to school as it does at younger ages. * Acknowledgement: We are grateful to David Blau, Eve Caroli, Deni...
In India, as in many developing countries, female sterilization is the main contraceptive method:... more In India, as in many developing countries, female sterilization is the main contraceptive method: 37% of women older than 25 are sterilized. However, no economic study assesses the effect of sterilization, providing guidance on efficient reproductive health policies. We analyze the consequences of sterilization for maternal health, considering the endogeneity of the decision. We exploit that Indian households face different infant mortality risks and have a son preference. Sterilization increases when women have a boy first-born, but less so when they live in a malarious area, as they fear losing the boy; this situation provides an instrument. We show that sterilization strongly increases the prevalence of various symptoms in the reproductive sphere and do not find any positive effect associated to sterilization in terms of women’s health. This paper is the first to assess the effect of a specific contraceptive method on health with a clear identification strategy.
Economic shocks have been shown to affect child labor and particularly so when households fail to... more Economic shocks have been shown to affect child labor and particularly so when households fail to access credit. This paper endeavours to assess whether access toagricultural labor markets also reduce the impact of shocks on child labor. Using panel data from Tanzania, we confirm that households respond to transitory productivity shocks by changes in child labor, but that (1) child labor increases with increases in rainfall, (2) it increases less when households have access to a labor market and (3) the agricultural labor market seems more efficient than the credit market to smooth rainfall shocks. These findings are consistent with the theoretical model offered in the paper. They highlight that imperfect agricultural labor markets are important determinants of child labor.
The question of diverging interests and preferences within couples over the use of household reso... more The question of diverging interests and preferences within couples over the use of household resources and the consequences of these con_ictual views has been present for a long time in the development literature, albeit in a somewhat scattered way. This paper selectively reviews the abundant literature that o_ers insights into the intra-household decision-making process, the strategies put in place by individuals to secure their access to private resources, and the role of the changing economic environment in altering these mechanisms. This paper bridges di_erent strands of the social sciences and exempli_es the complementarities among them. The main features of household organization are described to set the scene for the individual strategies introduced to bypass intra-household negotiations and secure access to private resources. These strategies include e_orts to maintain access to income-earning opportunities and secrecy about income and savings. This paper also discusses atte...
This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between endowment at birth and long-term outcomes.... more This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between endowment at birth and long-term outcomes. Birth weight has been shown to influence outcomes later in life, suggesting that in-utero shocks have long lasting consequences. However, traditional measures of human capital at birth (i.e. birth weight) are potentially measured with error and endogenous. We deal with such issues thanks to the use of a long panel of children born in 1983 in Cebu (Philippines) and interviewed repeatedly until 2005. Our contribution is threefold. First, we build a refined health endowment measure netted out from prenatal investments. Our results show that the usual estimate of birth weight exceeds by 50\% the true causal effect of birth weight on later outcomes. Second, initial endowments affect trajectories both through the human capital production function and parental investment. The effect of birth endowment fades out over time but remains until adulthood. The fading out is very limited for health ou...
We analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in developing countries by estimating ... more We analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in developing countries by estimating the effect of family size on child’s education in urban Philippines. To isolate exogenous changes in family size, we exploit a policy shock that occurred in the late 1990s when the mayor of Manila enacted a municipal ban on modern contraceptives. Since other comparable cities in the Manila metropolitan area where not affected by the ban, this allows us to implement a differencein-difference estimation of the effect of family size. Our analysis relies on census and survey data and focuses on two dimensions : the effect of the ban on fertility and family size and the effect of family size on the probability for a child be held back in school. Our results indicate that the contraceptive ban lead to a significant increase in family size, which had a sizable, negative impact on child education.
Spatial isolation is considered as one of the main determinants of poverty. Therefore, many trans... more Spatial isolation is considered as one of the main determinants of poverty. Therefore, many transport investments are undertaken with a stated objective of poverty reduction. In our paper, we evaluate a Tanzanian program that rehabilitated 2500km of major roads between 2008 and 2013. We deal with endogenous placement issues with a household fixed-effect strategy combined with a propensity score matching. Contrary to most studies, we find damaging effects of the road on the rural population: the price of the main product (rice) decreases, they reduce rice production and reallocate labor away from farm but opportunities of o_-farm work are scarce. This results in depressed wages and households declare a lower satisfaction. This is consistent with a situation where rural households face an increased competition due to lower transportation costs.
WIDER Working Paper, 2017
In India, as in many developing countries, female sterilization is the main contraceptive method:... more In India, as in many developing countries, female sterilization is the main contraceptive method: 37% of women older than 25 are sterilized. However, no economic study assesses the effect of sterilization, providing guidance on efficient reproductive health policies. We analyze the consequences of sterilization for maternal health, considering the endogeneity of the decision. We exploit that Indian households face different infant mortality risks-driven by malaria prevalence-and have a son preference. Sterilization increases when women have a boy firstborn, but less so when they live in a malarious area, as they fear losing the boy; this situation provides an instrument. We show that sterilization strongly increases the prevalence of various symptoms in the reproductive sphere while also reducing the risk of anemia, likely from avoiding pregnancy. This paper is the first to assess the effect of a specific contraceptive method with a clear identification strategy.
Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2020
Economic shocks have been shown to affect child labor, particularly when households cannot access... more Economic shocks have been shown to affect child labor, particularly when households cannot access credit. This paper asks whether access to agricultural labor markets also reduces the impact of productivity shocks on child labor. Using panel data from Tanzania, I show that (1) child labor rises with a positive rainfall shock, (2) child labor rises less when households have access to a labor market, and (3) the labor market seems more efficient than the credit market in smoothing child labor. These findings are consistent with theoretical predictions and highlight that imperfect labor markets are important determinants of child labor.
Revue d'économie du développement, 2004
Christelle Dumas, « Impact de la structure familiale sur les décisions parentales de mise au trav... more Christelle Dumas, « Impact de la structure familiale sur les décisions parentales de mise au travail des enfants : le cas du Brésil »,
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
In developing countries, the opportunity costs of children's time can signicantly hinder universa... more In developing countries, the opportunity costs of children's time can signicantly hinder universal education. This paper studies one of these opportunity costs: we estimate the agricultural productivity of children aged 10 to 15 years old using the LSMS-ISA panel survey in Tanzania. Since child labor can be endogenous, we exploit the panel structure of the data and instrument child labor with changes in the age composition of the household. One day of child work leads to an increase in production value by roughly US$0.89. Children enrolled in school work 26 fewer days than nonenrolled children. Compensating enrolled children for loss in income can be accomplished with monthly payments of $1.92. However, a complete simulation of a hypothetical conditional cash transfer shows that even $10/month transfers would fail to achieve universal school enrollment of children aged 10 to 15 years old.
The World Bank Economic Review, 2016
We analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in developing countries by estimating ... more We analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in developing countries by estimating the effect of family size on child education in urban Philippines. To isolate exogenous changes in family size, we exploit a policy shock: in the late 1990s, the mayor of Manila enacted a municipal ban on modern contraceptives. Since other comparable cities in the Manila metropolitan area were not affected by the ban, this allows us to implement a difference-indifference estimation of the effect of family size. We also exploit the fact that older mothers were less likely to become pregnant during the ban. Our results indicate that the contraceptive ban led to a significant increase in family size. They also provide evidence of a quality-quantity tradeoff : increased family size led to a sizable decrease in school performance.
This paper assesses the impact of labor performed during childhood on cognitive achievement of te... more This paper assesses the impact of labor performed during childhood on cognitive achievement of teenagers, measured by tests. Introduction of community fixed effects and use of multiple tests taken at the entry of primary school allows to control for unobserved heterogeneity and measurement error in the entry tests. We find no detrimental impact of participation of children to economic activities on their subsequent learning once controlling for the number of years of education but rather a positive, though small, impact. This could come from increased monetary resources or from knowledge acquisition due to a higher frequentation of the parents. Working more than 17 hours a week though prevents the child to learn as much as the other children.
Identifies factors, including economic vulnerability of households, determining children's pa... more Identifies factors, including economic vulnerability of households, determining children's participation in the labour market.
Universal preschool is often seen as the mean par excellence of correcting social inequality in e... more Universal preschool is often seen as the mean par excellence of correcting social inequality in educational achievement. However, evidence on the short and long-term effect of preschool is very limited. Over the 1960s and 1970s, France undertook a large-scale expansion of preschool enrollment. As a result, during this period, the enrollment rate of 3 years old children rose from 35% to 90% and that of 4 years old rose from 60% to virtually 100%. This paper evaluates the effect of this expansion on subsequent schooling outcomes (repetitions, test scores, high school graduation) and wages. We examine the average benefit of preschool enrollment and differences across social groups in the benefits of preschool. We find some sizeable and persistent effect of preschool and this points to the fact that preschool can be a tool for reducing inequalities. Indeed, the analysis shows that children from worse-off or intermediate social groups benefit more from preschool than children from better...
World Development, 2013
There is some indirect evidence that child labor is aected by market imperfections. This paper pr... more There is some indirect evidence that child labor is aected by market imperfections. This paper provides a theoretical model to discuss the eect of improvements on the labor market, when households cannot rely on neither the land nor the credit markets. The predictions dier by land ownership: landless or large landowners should decrease child labor when labor market imperfections decrease. Households who had chosen not to supply any labor on the wage market (households with intermediate-upper land levels) remain unaected and households who combine farm work with wage work (households with intermediate-lower land levels) may either increase or decrease their child labor use. We use Malagasy data to estimate the relation between child labor and various measures of markets imperfections. We match those data with a municipality census so as to control for a large set of village characteristics. We nd that on average market imperfections (labor but also land and credit) do indeed increase child labor and obtain heterogenous eects by land ownership that are consistent with the theoretical model. The results point to the fact that an improvement of markets competitiveness should decrease child labor (and even the more so for labor markets), which provides an alternative policy to ght against child labor.
Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2012
This paper assesses the impact of labor performed during childhood on cognitive achievement of te... more This paper assesses the impact of labor performed during childhood on cognitive achievement of teenagers, measured by tests. Introduction of community fixed effects and use of multiple tests taken at the entry of primary school allows to control for unobserved heterogeneity and measurement error in the entry tests. We find no detrimental impact of participation of children to economic activities on their subsequent learning once controlling for the number of years of education but rather a positive, though small, impact. This could come from increased monetary resources or from knowledge acquisition due to a higher frequentation of the parents. Working more than 17 hours a week though prevents the child to learn as much as the other children.
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Papers by Christelle Dumas