Child Disability And Mother’s Labour Force Participation
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Date
2021-10
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University Of Ghana
Abstract
The world and especially, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to experience relatively low female labour force participation rates– a phenomenon mainly attributed to childbirth and childcare, coupled with the primary role of being the caretaker of the home. However, the growing phenomenon of increased female labour force participation in recent times has caught the attention of researchers and development practitioners because of its usefulness in measuring gender inequality.
The study draws on the Ghana Living Standards Survey Round Seven (GLSS VII), to investigate the effect of child disability on maternal labour force participation. It applies the probit and multinomial logistic models to estimate the effects that child disability has on maternal employment status and the type of employment chosen after the incidence of child disability. Also, to account for endogeneity bias, differences in a mother’s ability to handle children were considered.
The study finds a negative but insignificant correlation between child disability and mother’s employment status which suggests that mothers with children who are disabled are less likely to be employed. Taking the types of disabilities into consideration on mother’s employment status, only sensory disability predicted mother’s employment status. Mothers with children who had a sensory disability are 17.1 percent less likely to be employed. Considering mothers‟ choice of employment, we observe a positive correlation between child disability and no employment and a negative correlation for formal and informal employment. We suggest that policies or programmes that provide childcare centers or services and after school care services in schools can greatly help release mothers for labour market activities.
Description
MPhil. Economics
Keywords
Labour Force, Mother, Disability, Child