Environmental Hoods Collection Work And Children’S Schooling: The Case Of Schooling In Kiambu District

Abstract

This study examines the link between environmental goods collection and children schooling in Kiambu District. Kenya. The study was carried out against the increasing consensus in the literature on household dependence on natural resources and the suggested consequences on households investing more time in collection of those scarce resources especially firewood and water. Children schooling is measured as the child's school attendance and performance in school. The study uses cross sectional data collected from Kiambu district in I.ari. Ndeiva and Kikuyu division in May 2007. Both descriptive and econometrics techniques arc employed to achieve the study objectives. Descriptive statistics indicates that 88 per cent of the sampled children attend school with u drop out rate of 10 per cent. It also indicates that 59 per cent of school going children combines schooling and resource collectioa The data further shows that 83 per cent of children arc in puhlic schools relative to private schools. Possible endogeneity of resource collection work in the school attendance equation is corrected for using bivariate probit and instrumental variable probit estimation. The probit model was also estimated for the performance model. Die econometrics results support the hypothesis of a negative relationship between children resource collection work and their probability of attending school. The results also suggest that performance in school docs not depend on environmental goods'rcsource collection work of children. Finally the study recommends ways of increasing water supply to reduce the time children spend on collecting it and ways of substituting firewood.