Productive Safety Net Programme and Children's Time Use Between Work and Schooling in Ethiopia
Government, non-government and donor organisations have developed a social assistance programme known as the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) which has two sub-programmes, namely the Public Work Programme (PWP) and Direct Support Programme (DSP). PSNP is designed to reduce the vulnerability of poor people to drought. It targets households in most cases without considering ex ante the issue of intra-household resource distribution. This paper assesses, using Young Lives survey data, the impacts of PSNP and Agricultural Extension Programme (AEP) on time use between work and schooling, as well as the highest grade completed by 12-year-old children in rural and urban Ethiopia.
Empirically the study used propensity score matching techniques to estimate the impact of PSNP (PWP and DSP) and AEP on child welfare measured by time use in various types of work, schooling and studying. While beneficiaries have to supply labour in return for a daily unskilled wage to be part of the PWP, poor people unable to supply labour are entitled to be part of the DSP in order to get free cash and/or food aid. Many farmers are part of the AEP, through which they are encouraged to adopt labour- and land-augmenting technologies like fertiliser, improved seeds and new cultural practices.
We found that PWP in rural areas increases child work for pay; reduces children's time spent on child care, household chores and total hours spent on all kind of work combined; and increases girls spending on studying. The DSP in rural and urban areas reduces time children spent on paid and unpaid work, and increases the highest grade completed by boys in urban areas. On the other hand, AEP in rural areas was effective in reducing child work for pay and total work, increasing time girls spent on schooling and the highest grade completed by girls.
To conclude, although PSNP targets households, it has been instrumental in improving child well-being in terms of reducing total time spent on working, childcare and household chores and increasing girls' time spent on studying, which has a strong implication for the quality of education. However, the PWP part of the PSNP is still not effective enough to reduce children's involvement in paid work, or to increase the highest grade completed and time children spent on studying at home.
The implications of the study are, therefore, that programmes have to be designed in such a way as to be compatible with household behaviour in order to reduce the negative effects of PWP on children. Consideration should be given to shifting the support programme from PWP to conditional on school attendance; and to supporting households through activities that have a higher income effect than substitution effect, such as extension support. Moreover, the design of the PSNP should consider the substitution effect on children and hence target children instead of households. In this regard, perhaps considering changing part of the PWP into school feeding would be important. Moreover, the gender impacts of labour requirements need further attention to ensure that programmes do not have negative impacts for women/men and girls/boys. Households unable to provide adult labour should receive direct support. The payment made to beneficiaries of PWP was not high enough to discourage children from engaging in paid and unpaid work. It would therefore be desirable to increase the payment for public work to make it more beneficial to children.