Engaged in work or study? Evidence from India

Kirti Gaur, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Kunal Keshri, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad

Purpose of the study is to examine child work, school attendance and duration of work and to assess the correlates of child's activity. The data comes from NFHS, 2005-06. Results reveal that, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have a high work participation rate, a high mean duration of work and a low school attendance. In India, every tenth child in the age group 5-11 work for three hours and every sixth child in the age group 12-14 work for six hours in a day. More than one-fifth of the working children have never attended school. Left out and dropout rates are high among working children and they are found to be in lower grades according to their age. It is noteworthy that orphan-hood, low socio-economic status and poverty play important role in pushing the children early in labour force or make them idle.