Abstract This study empirically examines the effect of child labor on academic achievement in 10 francophone Western and Central African countries. The data were taken from the Programme d’Analyse des Systemes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN and comprised characteristics of 25,288 grade six students across 1803 schools. Two-stage least squares analysis highlights that child labor undermines academic achievement regardless of subject, gender, and age. It lowers reading and mathematics scores for both genders and for children under 12 and over 13 years. Child labor therefore hinders human capital accumulation in African countries, and it takes place at the cost of future prosperity.

中文翻译：

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没有无害的童工：童工对西非和中非法语国家学业成绩的影响

摘要 本研究实证检验了童工对 10 个西非和中非法语国家学业成绩的影响。数据取自 Program d'Analyse des Systemes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN，包括 1803 所学校的 25,288 名六年级学生的特征。两阶段最小二乘法分析强调，无论学科、性别和年龄如何，童工都会破坏学业成绩。它降低了男女和 12 岁以下和 13 岁以上儿童的阅读和数学分数。因此，童工阻碍了非洲国家的人力资本积累，其代价是未来的繁荣。