Abstract

Short-run income shocks can negatively impact school attendance when children are pulled out in order to work, either based on the need for greater income during negative shocks or the increased opportunity cost of child time during positive shocks. This paper proxies for income shocks using fluctuations in local rainfall and evaluates its impact on child schooling, labour force participation, and domestic work. We then investigate whether conditional cash transfers are able to protect school attendance during these temporary shocks. Using data on Brazil’s Bolsa Família programme along with municipal-level rainfall data, we find that positive rainfall shocks cause children to increase the likelihood of paid labour but Bolsa partially mitigates these effects, though less so among boys and older children. Furthermore, we find evidence that even when children do not drop out of school during these shocks, Bolsa may not fully maintain their intensity of school attendance and shocks may hinder academic progress. These results suggest that higher wages cause children to substitute time away from schooling, but that Bolsa acts as a partial safety net that stabilises human capital investments during short-run shocks and may help produce larger long-run benefits.

摘要

当儿童为了工作而辍学时，短期收入冲击会对入学率产生负面影响，这可能是因为在负面冲击期间需要增加收入，或者在正面冲击期间儿童时间的机会成本增加。本文使用当地降雨量的波动来代表收入冲击，并评估其对儿童入学、劳动力参与和家务劳动的影响。然后我们调查有条件的现金转移是否能够在这些临时冲击期间保护学校出勤率。使用巴西 Bolsa Família 计划的数据以及市级降雨数据，我们发现正降雨冲击会导致儿童增加有偿劳动的可能性，但 Bolsa 部分减轻了这些影响，尽管在男孩和年龄较大的儿童中影响较小。此外，我们发现证据表明，即使孩子们在这些冲击期间没有辍学，Bolsa 也可能无法完全保持他们的就学强度，而且冲击可能会阻碍学业进步。这些结果表明，较高的工资会导致儿童放弃上学，但 Bolsa 充当部分安全网，在短期冲击期间稳定人力资本投资，并可能有助于产生更大的长期收益。