Household work as a deterrent to schooling: an analysis of adolescent girls in Peru
Levison, D.; Moe, K.S.
Journal of Developing Areas 32(3): 339-356
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0022-037X DOI: 10.2307/4192776Document Number: 275490
Using the 1985-86 Peru Living Standard Survey (PLSS) data on hours spent in paid work, unpaid work, household chores, and school, the paper analyses the determinants of hours spent in chores and in school for adolescent girls in Peru. Generalized Tobit methods are employed to estimate hours in school and hours of chores separately. The data set included 2 387 unmarried adolescent girls between the ages of 10-19. Two major issues from the literature are addressed: that the focus of most previous studies has been on education alone or on paid labour market work as the primary deterrent to schooling, therefore ignoring the unpaid labour that girls do; and that, owing to a lack of data, the majority of studies have focused on whether children engage in activities or not, as opposed to how much time they spend on those activities.