School Dropout, Adolescent Work and Mother's Work in Developing Countries: The Mexican Case

Silvia Elena Giorguli Saucedo, El Colegio de México

During the last twenty years, Mexico as many other countries in the developing world, has experienced a rapid insertion of women into the labor market for many reasons: as a family response to the fall in real household income, as a result of the increase in women´s education and as part of the changes in the productive organization around the world. Motherhood has been considered a factor inhibiting women´s participation in the labor force. However, studies in Mexico suggest that since the eighties, among all women, the participation rates of mothers have increased most rapidly (García and Oliveira, 1992; Pacheco, 1997). The main purpose of this study is to explore how the insertion of mothers into the labor market influences the lives of their adolescent children. Specifically, the paper explores whether the educational and labor status of adolescent sons and daughters vary depending on the mother´s labor status. In the context of the developing countries, like Mexico, there is a combination of possible mechanisms mediating such relation. On one side, children´s early insertion into jobs is a common strategy used to increase household income and may deter school attendance. The rise of the household income and the insertion of mothers into the labor force itself may reduce the need of adolescent labor, favoring their permanence in school. Adolescent children may also benefit from mother´s greater access and greater say about the distribution of household resources as mothers are more child-oriented than fathers and tend to invest more in their education (García and Oliveira, 1994; Chant, 1991; Lloyd and Blanc, 1996). Aside from these potentially positive effects of mother´s labor status on their adolescent children, there are other mechanisms, which may have an opposite effect. On one side, given the traditional division of roles in Mexico, mothers have the main responsibility over the supervision of children. When mothers work, the supervision over their children may decrease and this may increase the chances of an early dropout from school (during their adolescence). Also, it is possible that as mothers are not at home because they go out to work, elder children (mainly but not exclusively their daughters)take over some of the responsibilities of housework and childcare of younger children. If that is the case, the burden of house chores may be incompatible with studying or may reduce their performance at school. The effect of mother´s labor status will depend on the context and resources of working moms. On one side, non-waged jobs may result in more flexible working schedules for mothers and might even be located closer to their homes, facilitating the continuous supervision over children´s educational progress and their social behavior inside and outside school. Thus, the supervision over children may vary depending on whether the working mother is waged or non-waged. On the other side, the absence of the father may translate into fewer resources for the household and probably more responsibilities over the elder children when the mom is the sole-provider. Also, the negotiation over the use and distribution of the household resources is different when the father is and is not present at home. As Sylvia Chant (1991) puts it in her study on single mothers in Mexico, single mothers face the controversy of having a strong incentive to invest in their children´s education, without having to negotiate with their partners and, at the same time, may have a greater need of adolescent labor to compensate for their low household income. To explore the interaction between mother´s labor status and what their adolescent children are doing, this paper focuses in the school attendance and labor status of urban Mexican children between 12 and 16 years old who lived with their mothers. It is between these ages that almost half of the Mexican children will leave school and many of them will start working. The paper uses information from the Encuesta Nacional de Dinámica Demográfica, conducted in Mexico in 1997. The survey was applied to a nationwide representative sample and included around 22,000 adolescents in urban zones living with their mothers. Adolescents were grouped in four categories: “only studying”, “working and studying”, “only working”, “not working and not studying”. When children reported to be working in paid jobs or in family businesses, they were considered as working. As the dependent variable is categorical, I estimated multinomial logit models for the probabilities of working and/or studying for adolescent children in urban zone. The main independent variable combines mother´s labor status with type of job (waged or non-waged jobs) and the co-residence status relative to the father of the children. The resulting independent variable has six categories: “both parents, mother not working”, “both parents, mother in waged job”, “both parents, mother in non-waged job”, “only mother, not working”, “only mother, in waged job”, “only mother, in non-waged job”. The model includes control variables for demographic characteristics, presence of other children in the household, presence of other adults, family socioeconomic status and community level variables. Although there are practically no differences by sex in educational attainment at this age between urban adolescents in Mexico, there is a difference in terms of their working status. Following the traditional gender division of labor, adolescent sons tend to work more often than daughters, and the latter reported to be more often devoted to housework. This trend suggests that the impact of mother´s labor status may vary by sex. For that reason, the models were estimated separately for sons and daughters. Also, looking at the differences by socioeconomic status will give more information about why adolescent children are leaving school (for example, due to job-related or other reasons) and how the effect of mother´s labor status varies depending on the economic condition of the family. For that reason, the analysis is also conducted by SES. Preliminary descriptive statistics suggest that children whose mothers work in waged jobs tend to have higher enrollment and lower labor participation rates. When the mother is working in non-waged jobs, the percentage of children working and studying is high. It is possible that mothers in non-waged jobs keep their children in school but at the same time, involve them in the same type of activity or job as theirs. The results also suggest that the absence of the father decreases the number of adolescent children at school and not working, regardless of mother´s labor status. In general, the descriptive statistics suggest that when mothers are working, sons and daughters tend to stay longer in school and delay their entrance into the labor force, specially when the mother works in waged jobs. Nonetheless, mothers in waged jobs have the highest education and income in the sample. It is possible that the descriptive results are reflecting the higher SES of children whose mothers are working in waged activities. In fact, the preliminary results from the multivariate analysis suggest that, once controlling for SES, there is lower school attendance among adolescent children whose mothers worked in waged jobs, specially when the father is not at home. Regarding mothers in non-waged jobs, once adding controls, children in this group seem to follow a similar pattern as children in traditional households (both parents at home, mother not working). The results also support that, even after controlling for diverse factors, the absence of the father has a detrimental effect on adolescents´ education. References. Chant, Sylvia. 1991. Women and survival in Mexican cities. Perspectives on gender, labor, markets and low income households , Manchester: Manchester University Press. García, Brígida and Orlandina De Oliveira. 1994. Trabajo femenino y vida familiar en México , México: El Colegio de México. Lloyd, Cynthia and Ann Blanc. 1996. “Children’s schooling in sub-Saharan Africa: the role of fathers, mothers and others” in Population and Development Review , 22(3): 265-298. Pacheco, Edith. 1997. “Cambios en la población económicamente activa: 1900-1995” in Demos , 10: 30-31.