CHILD LABOR AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN NORTHERN MALI A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Andrew Scott Dillon August 2008 ©2008 Andrew Scott Dillon CHILD LABOR AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN NORTHERN MALI Andrew Scott Dillon, Ph.D. Cornell University 2008 This dissertation examines how agricultural households allocate children’s time between work and schooling activities and utilize access to production technology, namely irrigation, to assure minimum subsistence requirements in an arid and famine-prone region of northern Mali. These questions are examined using a data set that the author collected which tracked 245 households in 2006 from a previous survey conducted in 1997-98 and a larger cross-sectional survey of 2,658 households that was collected in 151 villages across two regions of Mali (Tombouctou and Gao). The second chapter of the dissertation provides descriptive statistics from the sample and an explanation of the survey methodology. The third and fourth chapters investigate children’s time allocation to schooling, home production, and market production using participation and hours data. Two types of shocks to the household’s agricultural income and total labor availability provide plausibly exogenous variation to identify substitution effects across children’s activities including withdrawal from school and adult labor supply. These results are robust to varying assumptions about the structure of unobserved heterogeneity at the household and village level. The role of different asset types on child labor substitution between activities when households experience shocks is also investigated. Because the collection of children’s time allocation information from household surveys is prone to significant sources of measurement error, the fourth chapter also compares hours data and subjective measures of children’s work obtained through a game played with children. The fifth chapter investigates the impact of village level irrigation projects on various household welfare indicators. Using difference-in-differences, propensity score matching, and matched difference-in-differences with an eight year panel, the impact of access to irrigation on poverty, agricultural production, and nutrient intakes is estimated. This chapter also provides evidence of both saving and sharing within villages as an alternative strategy to consuming gains in agricultural production. This finding suggests that estimating program impact using consumption data may underestimate the welfare gains of irrigation investment by ignoring the household’s saving and informal insurance network. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Andrew Scott Dillon was born in Woodbridge, VA in 1977. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia in Economics and an interdisciplinary program, Political and Social Thought in 1999. After finishing these studies, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali from 1999-2001, before beginning his graduate work at Cornell. iii To Karin, for courage iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My parents, Barry and Linda Dillon; brother and sister, Joe and Anna Dillon have provided familial support and encouragement throughout this period of study. I am fortunate to have such a family. My wife, Karin, has actively participated in this research and been a part of all the vicissitudes of graduate study. I am grateful to have a wonderful life companion with which to share all these times. The support of Christine Hobbs also made the completion of this work possible, especially during the times waiting for research grants to be finalized. The advice and encouragement of David Sahn (chair), Christopher Barrett, and Kaushik Basu at Cornell University and John Hoddinott at the International Food Policy Research Institute is gratefully acknowledged for serving as members of my dissertation committee and weathering preliminary drafts, incomplete ideas, and sophomoric mistakes. The quality of these papers was influenced by their input and comments. In addition to their scholarly counsel, I am fortunate to have also benefitted from their wisdom during a particularly difficult time during my graduate studies without which this dissertation may not have been written. In Mali, the family of Nouhou Maiga and Leila Toure welcomed Karin and I warmly as members of their own family for a full year which endowed us with a comfortable work and home life. It is not possible to overstate their hospitality or generosity towards us. Nouhou Maiga shared with us his technical expertise on village level irrigation, managed social issues, resolved temporary liquidity constraints, and shared many laughs with us. Keeping us well fed and lodged, Zin ―Height,‖ graciously took v care of many concerns for us. The family of Abdrahamane Maiga is also gratefully acknowledged for their hospitality in Goundam. The program of research was funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s project in Niafunke, the Projet de Developpement Zone Lacustre- Phase II (PDZL-II), the Programme Mali Nord (GTZ/KFW), SAGA (Strategies and Analysis for Growth and Access) in collaboration with GREAT (Groupe de Recherche Economique Appliquée et Théorique), and the Einaudi Center at Cornell University. A related feasibility study conducted in February and March 2005 was funded by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Einaudi Center at Cornell University. Collaboration with these institutions throughout the research process was facilitated by Nadine Gbossa, Mahamadou Nadio, Hamzata Diallo, Synali Troare, Henner Papendieck, Barbara Rocksloh, Yehia ag Mohamed Ali, John Hoddinott, Massa Coulibaly and David Sahn. Field agents from the PDZL II and the Programme Mali Nord provided helpful collaboration and local knowledge throughout the data collection process. Excellent research assistance was provided by Karin Dillon and Abdourhamane Maiga who served as field supervisors during all or parts of the data collection activities. A team of motivated survey enumerators conducted the survey often under difficult conditions. Lastly, but most importantly, the people of northern Mali gave generous amounts of patience, time and hospitality in responding to survey questions. Other economists who have given constructive comments or useful discussions regarding the content of these papers include Lori Beaman, Kathleen Beegle, Philip Brown, Eric Edmonds, Daniel Gilligan and Xiaobo Zhang. I also appreciate the vi friendship and comments of R. Kaj Gittings with whom I endured the formative early years of graduate school. All errors remain the exclusive responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the funding organizations or any of the above mentioned people. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v List of Figures x List of Tables xi List of Abbreviations xiv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Methodology and Descriptive Statistics Introduction 5 Survey Area Description 6 Survey Design and Sample Selection 13 Survey Implementation 15 Data Collected 17 Conclusions 25 Chapter 3: Child Labor and Schooling Responses to Production and Health Shocks Introduction 27 Theoretical Model 30 Econometric Specification 38 Data Description 45 Descriptive Statistics 49 Estimation Results 61 Conclusion 95 viii Chapter 4: Changes in the Distribution of Children’s Time in Response to Production and Health Shocks: Evidence from Hours Data and Subjective Evaluations by Children Introduction 94 Analytic Framework 101 Data Description 104 Descriptive Statistics 106 Econometric Specification 115 Empirical Results 120 Conclusion 139 Chapter 5: Access to Irrigation and the Escape from Poverty Introduction 142 A Model of Irrigation Investment and Risk 146 Survey Area and Data Description 151 Estimating Treatment Effects using Nonexperimental Data 162 Empirical Results 171 Conclusion 179 Chapter 6: Conclusions 182 Technical Appendices Appendix 1: Questionnaire Organization 185 Appendix 2: Decomposition of the Sample 187 Appendix 3: Definition of Variables 188 Appendix 4: Child Labor Model 193 Bibliography 196 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Map of Mali 7 Figure 2.2: Age Pyramid 19 Figure 4.1: Histograms of Children’s Work Rankings 108 Figure 4.2: Histogram of Children’s School Rankings 108 Figure 4.3: Histogram of Children’s Leisure Rankings 109 Figure 5.1: Kernel density estimates of total household consumption (in FCFAs) for households with and without irrigation 160 Figure 5.2: Kernel density estimates of total household agricultural production for households with and without irrigation 161 Figure 5.3: Kernel density estimates of total household livestock units for households with and without irrigation 161 Figure 5.4: Distribution of propensity scores for households with irrigation and without irrigation 168 x LIST OF TABLES Chapter 2 Table 2.1: Sample Decomposition 19 Table 2.2: Sample Descriptive Statistics Disaggregated by Urban/Rural Strata 20 Table 2.3: Agricultural Production and Consumption by Cercle 24 Table 2.4: Poverty line--1 Euro per day per person (239,217 FCFA) 25 Chapter 3 Table 3.1: Participation by Activity, Children 10-17 years 50 Table 3.2.A: Participation Rates of Boys and Girls (10-17 years) 52 in Rural and Urban Areas Table 3.2.B: Participation Rates of Boys and Girls (10-17 years) 53 in Rural and Urban Areas Table 3.3.A: Descriptive Statistics: Household and Child Characteristics