What forces children away from home? Evidence from Uganda

ABSTRACT

Child mobility is a significant phenomenon all over the world and is especially prominent in developing countries, where it is made worse by income conditions in rural households. The aim of this paper is to advance a step forward in the quantitative investigation of factors driving rural households’ decisions to send children away from home. Using Ugandan panel data to account for household unobserved heterogeneity, we find that the age of the household head as well as the presence of a female household head, the number of children, marital status, and the circumstance of mother not living in the household affect the likelihood of sending away children. On the other hand, other factors such as education and mobile phone ownership do not seem to play a role.

KEYWORDS:

• Children away from home
• panel data
• probit model
• Uganda

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J13
• O15
• R23

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Also migration and children trafficking are important causes of child mobility that deserve a specific analysis.

² Among the unselected answers there are: to escape insecurity from this area, deceased, looking for work elsewhere, illness, education, marriage, divorce and started own household.