Child labor is a threatening evil. It is particularly dangerous because it involves the sacrifice of a
child‟s future welfare in exchange for immediate benefit; it is a difficult phenomenon to combat
because it involves questions of power within the households. This study attempts to
comprehensively investigate various dimensions of child labor in Ghana and show whether its
ban will be beneficial to the country.
Drawing on the GLSS6 datasets, the study applied four different estimation approaches to
achieve the main objectives. A univariate logit estimation to determine the factors that make
parents cause their children to work and to test the poverty hypothesis and the intergenerational
transmission of child labor. A bivariate probit estimation to determine the factors that jointly
determine child working and schooling decision and to investigate whether there is a trade-off
between these too decisions. The study also applied a Heckman selection estimation approach to
find out the factors which determine the number of hours a child supplies to the work. Finally,
the study applied both an ordinary least squares (OLS) and an instrumental variable (IV)
approaches of estimation to analyze the impact of child labor on the adult labor market.
Based on the univariate estimation approach, the study provided evidence to indicate that
poverty is a very important determinant of child labor in Ghana. We found evidence to support
the claim that child labor in Ghana follows an intergenerational pattern, thus parents who were
once child laborers are more likely to cause their children to work. It was also found that there is
a trade-off between child working and schooling decisions. The bivariate probit estimation
showed that the factors that jointly determine child work and school are age of the child, the
presence of the father in the house, the poverty status of the household and location of the
community (urban or rural).
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Using the Heckman selection estimation approach, we observed that factors such as the
age of the child, certain household, parents and community characteristics are the main
determinants of child labor supply. In the study, we found no gender gap in the hours supplied by
children to work. The analysis of the impact of child labor on the labor market showed that child
labor indirectly depresses the wages of adults, slightly increases unemployment in the adults‟
labor market and negatively affects adults‟ hours of work and their participation in the labor
market.
Based on the findings, the study recommends that policies aimed at alleviating poverty
are crucial in tackling child labor and breaking the cycle of poverty transmission form one
generation to the next. Policies that are able to break this cycle, family by family are potentially
the most effective instrument to reduce the incidence of child labor. Education also seems to be
essential in breaking the cycle of poverty and child labor; we therefore recommend that
campaigns such as the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) and the Capitation
Grant must have more depth than is currently the case.