This paper exploits a unique longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the
consequences of child labor on education, employment choices, and marital status
over a 10-year horizon. We use crop and rainfall shocks as instrumental variables
for child labor. For boys, we find that a one standard deviation (5.7 hour) increase
in child labor leads 10 years later to a loss of approximately one year of schooling
and to a substantial increase in the likelihood of farming and of marrying at a
younger age. Strikingly, we find no significant effects on education for girls, but
do find a significant increase in the likelihood of marrying young and some
evidence of reduced labor productivity. We also find that crop shocks lead to an
increase in agricultural work for boys and instead lead to an increase in chore
hours for girls. Our results are consistent with education being a lower priority for
girls or with chores causing less disruption for education than agricultural work.
The increased chore hours could also account for our results on marriage and
labor productivity for girls.