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Abstract
Though there is comprehensive literature on the effectiveness of school feeding in increasing school enrollment and school attendance, little is known about its potential effect on child labor. This paper takes advantage of the 2007 Core Welfare Questionnaire Indicator survey conducted between August and September 2007 in Liberia to assess the causal impact of the School Feeding Programme (SFP) on child labour. Using the propensity score-matching technique, we find that the SFP leads to a statistically significant decrease in child labour estimated at between 14 and 17%. This result is robust to the use of different matching techniques and the choice of covariates used in the estimation of the propensity score. In addition, the analysis reveals that the SFP is mainly effective in reducing child labour for male children, children living in war-displaced households, and children living in households in which the head is literate. Overall, the study shows that the detrimental effect of conflict on child labor can be mitigated by school feeding interventions.
Notes
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In the final sample used for the analysis, a household only receives one of the food programs at once.
2 See online supplementary appendix A for the descriptions of the matching techniques
3 While there are recent available household surveys in Liberia, the only one with needed information to assess the impact of school feeding is the 2007 CWIQ survey (see online appendix C for the detail on the quality and availability of household surveys in Liberia).
4 Results are robust to the use of radius calliper and kernel matching, which have the main advantage of reducing the risk of bad matches and the variance of the estimators.