UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS 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 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES 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 By NGUYEN NGOC MINH THU Academic Supervisor: NGUYEN HOANG BAO HO CHI MINH CITY, November 2017 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 3 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.
Nguyen Ngoc Minh Thu Ho Chi Minh City, November 2017 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 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.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 5 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .2 Parents time for children .3 The Impaction of Parents on child labor .5 Structure of the thesis. 13 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Review of theory:. Effect of parents on children’s skill development.
Effect of Parents on children education. Effect of parents on children’s labour. Effect of poverty on child’s labor. 21 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .2 Child labor status (working or not) – logit model .3 Child working hours – multiple linear regression model .4 The logit model.
Error! Bookmark not defined.5 Heckman selection model. 27 CHAPTER 4: EMPIRICAL RESULTS .1 Overview of child labor problem in Vietnam. 49 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 6 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 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 7 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 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 8 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 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 9 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. 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.) 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 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 10 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 as 3.7 per cent Figure 3: Incidence of Child Labor between 5 SEA countries, 2000 to 2012, source: Our World in Data Even the overall cases of child labor reduce; the percentage of children who work only increased in Vietnam and Indonesia in Figure 4. Vietnam has the percentage of children who work only increased from 15.9 per cent in 2011 to 19 per cent in 2012. For Indonesia the figure is 11 per cent in 2009 and increases to 44.4 per cent in 2010. Child labor in others countries such as Thailand and Philippines remain unchanged, or slightly increased as Cambodia.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 11 Figure 4: Incidence of working children who work only in five SEA countries.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.6 per cent of father said that they spend less than one hour per day with their children.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. 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). TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 12 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.