Open AccessWhy Children do not Go to School in PakistanSome Estimates and a Theoretical Framework
Author(s) -
Moazam Mahmood,
Tarlo Javaid,
Almal Baig
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v33i4iipp.1231-1248
Subject(s) - mainstream , fertility , child labour , economics , human capital , work (physics) , labour economics , demographic economics , economic growth , sociology , political science , population , mechanical engineering , demography , law , engineering
Pakistan has a grave problem of human capital. The majority ofour children tend not to go to school. Instead they go to work. Policyon education and child labour has been clearly deficient in Pakistan.This policy failure, we feel is due to analytical deficiency inunderstanding the determinants and impact of children's schooling andlabour. The theoretical framework of this study is based on fivearguments. 1. Schooling, and child labour, are two aspects of the thesame problem, the problem of why children do not go to school. Schoolingand child labour are both the result of one decision-making process,whether to send a child to school, or to work. 2. Mainstream literatureon Pakistan does not consider the impact of this householddecision-making about children's schooling and labour on the aggregatelabour market. 3. Mainstream literature on Pakistan further does notconsider the impact of child labour on the labour market for women. 4.Mainstream literature also does not consider yet another impact ofhousehold decision-making about children's schooling and labour onfertility behaviour. ·5. These three processes, householddecision-making about children, the impact on the labour market, and theimpact on fertility, combine to give a perverse signalling mechanismthat tends to depress children's schooling, increase child labour,depress adult employment especially for women, and increase fertilityrates. So policy failure in Pakistan, may in large part be due to theinability to understand these three processes, and their combination ina perverse signalling mechanism.