Modelling Farmer’s Choice on Child Labour and Exclusive Schooling in Cocoa Sector: Evidence from Sefwi Wiawso Municipality in Ghana

by Open Science Repository Economics
(November 2013)

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of farmers’ choice on child labour and schooling in cocoa sector and activities performed by their children on cocoa farms. The study used multinomial Logit model to consistently estimate the likelihood of the farmers’ to use the labour of their children at the expense of exclusive schooling.

The results showed that, income of farmer, farmer’s education, age of farmer, and number of children of farmer are statistically stronger determinants influencing the probability of a farmers exploiting the child’s labour on farm against exclusive schooling and were statistically significant at 0.001, 0.001, 0.05, and 0.001 levels respectively.

The study also found out that, children belonging to cocoa farmer engage in activities including: land clearing (40%), gathering pods (78%), weeding (49%), planting (53%) felling (0.2%) cutting peg (0.6%), carrying seedlings (34%), carrying fermented beans (47%), and carrying dried cocoa beans for sale (2.9%) .

The study therefore recommends that policy makers take into consideration the aforementioned factors when designing appropriate education and labour policies especially in cocoa producing communities.

Keywords: child labour, multinomial logit, maximum likelihood, Ghana.

Full text

Modelling Farmer’s Choice on Child Labour and Exclusive Schooling in Cocoa Sector: Evidence from Sefwi Wiawso Municipality in Ghana