The impacts of health shocks on child labor evidence in vietnam

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY VIETNAM INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE IMPACTS OF HEALTH SHOCKS ON CHILD LABOR: EVIDENCE IN VIETNAM BY NGUYEN THI HA GIANG MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2017 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY VIETNAM INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES THE HAGUE THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE IMPACTS OF HEALTH SHOCKS ON CHILD LABOR: EVIDENCE IN VIETNAM A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By NGUYEN THI HA GIANG Academic Supervisor: DR LE VAN CHON HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2017 i DECLARATION I hereby declare that my thesis entitled “Impacts of health shocks on child labor: An evidence from Vietnam” is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text My dissertation is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text Date: September 20, 2017 Signature Full name: Nguyen Thi Ha Giang ii ABSTRACT Base on household decisions relating to child labor, this paper employs the Young Lives Dataset and Heckman’s selection model to explore the impacts of health shocks on child labor in Vietnam during the period of 2006-2009 This study also considers whether the buffering effect of asset holdings and access to credit are existence to cushion the impact of health shocks on child labor The main findings indicate health shocks only impact on the decision send the child to work, meaning increase the probability of the child labor participation Asset holdings is the significant mechanism to households coping with health shocks Also, the buffering effect of assets on the child labor participation is found However, the access to credit is not significant in both functions Additionally, poverty still remains as the crucial factor to determine child labor JEL Classification: D13, J13, J22, O12 Keywords: child labor, health shocks, buffering effect, heckman’s selection model Abbreviations: December 2017 Table of Contents ABSTRACT iii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem Statement and Significance of Research 1.2 Research Objectives and Research Questions 1.3 Scope of the study 1.4 Structure of Thesis Design CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Economic Child Labor 2.2 Impacts of Health Shocks on Household Outcome 10 2.3 Response of Household with Health Shocks 12 2.4 Health Shocks and Child Labor 15 CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 19 3.1 Research Methodology 19 3.1.1 Analytical Framework 19 3.1.2 Econometric Model 22 3.2 Vietnam Young Live dataset Overview 28 CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 29 4.1 Descriptive statistics 29 4.2 Regression results 32 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS 40 REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX 46 The list of Table and Figure Table 1: Variable Definition 27 Table 2: The child’s work hour following gender and the type of site 29 Figure 1: The graphical relation between the child work hour and the child age 29 Table 3: Distribution of child labor following the child age 30 Table 4: Description of health shocks 30 Table 5: The statistical description health shocks and child labor 31 Table 6: Description of using variables 32 Table 7: Results of Heckman’s selection model 33 Table 8: Marginal effect on the child labor participation function 34 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem Statement and Significance of Research Child labor and health shocks are interesting topics in both pieces of research as well as policy aspects, especially in developing countries Most of all governments admit the important role of children protection and of constructing a good environment for the child development (UNESCO, 2008) Therein, child labor reduction is one of the main goals that numerous international organizations and governments are trying to achieve the improvement Regarding health shocks, many studies indicate its wide range of negative impacts on household outcome including children’s life (Beegle et al, 2004; Dilion, 2012; Alam & Mahal, 2014) Understanding deeply both research areas and linking them together create a valuable research direction and still useful to contribute to the child development Related to this connection, this paper puts health shock’s consequence and child labor work together in order to explore, interpret and build an improvement for the child development in Vietnam and developing countries as well The below presentation will bring a whole picture to access this issue as well as provide grounds that this research is to deserve your attention Regarding health shocks, these are the important sources of household risks in developing countries, which are able to raise negative potential impacts on household outcome such as income reduction, out of expenditure and unbalancing labor supply In addition, psychological problem and the persistence of serious disease may be the longterm effects on the life of families (Alam & Mahal, 2014) Health shocks are considered as idiosyncratic risks that are difficult to predict as well as being costly household budget (Wagstaff, 2007; Bandara et al, 2015; Mitra et al, 2016) Following World Bank (2017), the crude death rate (per 1000 people) in Vietnam increases significantly during the period of 2002-2014, from 5.521% to 5.815% The one main cause of death comes from the cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (WHO, 2015) According to the report of Hanoi School Public Health (2016), the total health expenditure in Vietnam increases from 5.2% of GDP to 6.9% of GDP, at nearly 191,000 billion VND in 2014, where the private healthcare spending constitutes more than 52% of the total healthcare expenses In particular, the healthcare expenditure of each household experiences a rise of $11.4 in 2002-2014 per month, reaching about 116 USD each year It is noticed that the health care cost still remains as the catastrophic expenditure which the rate of out of pocket expenditure and the private expenditure on health accounts for more than 80% (2014), compared with 45.5% of that of the world (World Bank, 2017) In other words, the high healthcare spending can lead a burden that can push households to impoverishment Besides, results from other studies in Vietnam provide various empirical evidences about negative impacts of health risks such as earned income reduction, out of pocket expenditure, reducing labor productivity and falling the individual's BMI (Wagstaff, 2006; Van Minh et al, 2012, Bales, 2013) Therefore, it is not difficult to admit that health shocks create disturbances in the household life and should be noticed in a developing country like Vietnam Under pressure of health shocks, households will apply different strategies in order to protect their life become more stable There is a wide range of different coping strategies that families can consider to respond the health shock’s consequence such as using savings, trading livestock, selling assets, accessing the credit, changing household labor supply, especially including the using of child labor (Bandara et al, 2015; Bonfer & Wright, 2016) Under the shortage of budget and labor force, parents may decide to send their children to enter into the labor market without other mechanisms (Basu &Van, 1998) Children may spend more time to work to find income for solving the smooth consumption problem or substituting employment for people occurring the health risks and caring patients as well Besides, when household members occur the death or illness, children are also aware of their hard circumstances and desire for helping their families In another aspect, the demand for unskilled labor as child labor might remain in a high level of low- income and middle-income countries, where the agricultural sector plays an important role Furthermore, if households occur health shocks, using child labor in these areas is expected to increase more than others (Brown et al, 2002) The involvement of children in the workforce can have the negative impacts on childhood as well as children’s future life (ILO, 2013) In other words, when children spend more time for work activities than study or leisure, their human capital are difficult to remain in the good status Besides, child labor can relate to the poor nutrition and survival of children as well In several cases, children even have to work the much hours and overtake their ability, and this can generate the huge vulnerable sequels on children Some children even cannot attend school, others seem to lose the life as normal children A research of Beegle et al (2004) find the significant negative effect of child labor on school attainment in the Vietnam As the results, child labor also can reduce the human capital of the child while the child’s contribution plays a vital role in raising economic development in the future Indeed, child labor still exists although it is prevented by many international conventions as well as domestic laws For the legislation of child labor, Vietnam government gives some decisions related to lessening the employment of children In distance, Vietnam sanctioned the international conventions for children rights such as the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention (Ratifications of C182) in 2000 and Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment of ILO (C138) in 2000 In the internal nation, the Vietnamese government passed the amended Labor Code in 2012 prohibits the child labor under the age of 15, excluding some exceptions; Circular No.10/2013/TT/LDTBXH (2013) listed occupations and locations where adolescent labor is prohibited Besides, it takes into account for Decision No 1023/QD-TT issued by Vietnam's Prime Minister in June 2016 about the national project of preventing and minimizing child labor This program will take place over the period 2016-2020, with main targets are to attack illegal child labor, lessen child labor as well as protect the childhood before the sequel of child labor by providing various opportunities development to children However, the number of children attending economic activities in Vietnam still remains at around 2.83 million individuals, responding nearly 86% in rural area, and 1.315 million children belonged to hazardous labor (Viet Nam National Child Labor Survey, 2012) Also, the survey indicates that children aged from 5-17 those who not attend school result in doing the salaried work and chores as well as incapable of education investment, around 21% and 9.2% respectively Therefore, it cannot be denied that although there are various efforts of the government to protect children rights, child labor is still persisted Above overview poses interesting stories to study in both topics of child labor and health shocks in Vietnam Many specific studies also focus on the consequences of risk events on the household outcome, especially impacts of health shocks and coping strategies (Wagstaff, 2007; Mitra et al, 2015) Besides, many researches relate to children and child labor (Rosati & Tzannatos, 2000; Edmonds & Pavcnik, 2002; Beegle at al, 2004) However, the relationship between health shocks and child labor seems to be a gap This paper will connect both child labor and health shocks work together Besides, this study also considers whether other mechanisms such as household own asset and access the credit can help households coping with these risks to instead of using the child the research of Bandara et al (2015) However, they consider the dependent variable as the work hour of children is not a dummy of the child work participation as this step Moving on the work hour decision, health shocks not present a significant relationship It seems that the health shock does not impact on the degree of child labor In other words, the decision using how much the work hour of children is affected by several variables not include health shocks In the relationship between health shocks and child labor, health shocks actually just impact on the first step of the decision process To control the long-term impacts of health shocks occurring before the interview, the paper considers the parental existence to control the effect of the death of parents on their children's employment However, the result does not show the significant coefficient For the older children, it is able to expect that they can be prone to work more than younger children The findings present a non-linear relation of the child age with child labor In particular, the probability of child work participation increases a level of 23.5% from the initial level of 30% when he/she grows up one year This large figure presents that older children have much opportunities to work than others The quadratic relation of age and child work hour is found as well Coefficients of age indicate that when the age of the child increases unit (1 year), the child work hour will increase 2.82 hours per day from the median of age equal to The higher age leads the higher work hour of the child, this is similar with the finding of Gebru & Bezu (2014) when they explore that the older children more tend to participate in the domestic work such as collecting firewood, water, and fodder resource It is actually a noticed metric illustrating that the older child has to face with larger pressure from the employment compared with others In other words, older children spend much their time to work stead of joining to study or leisure This can make a negative impact to results of human capital of children as well as the child health (Beegle et al, 2004) Regarding the child gender, following the literature of child labor, the difference of time distribution of the child is distinguished from sexuality's the child as well as the feature of employment The study indicates the male child is likely to participate less than the female child on labor force with a negative coefficient significantly in the first function In more detail explanation, the boy's probability is less around -9.1% compared with that of the girl on joining the employment at the initial point of 30% In the overview, a girl's ability to participate in work larger than the boy, and this can lead to the gap of consequence from impacts of child labor to the development of children This is slightly inverse with other research results Studying for Brazil sample, Kruger et al (2007) found that when households occur the agricultural shock, the girl will spend less time to work than the boy Besides, Gebru & Bezu (2014) reveal the girl works less than 48% compared with the boy on overall collection activities, while the boy is likely to collect the environmental resource rather than the girl These results show that the gender might impact with different ways to child labor However, noted that our result is just significant in the participation function This means the female child is prone to engage the employment than the other, while the relationship between child gender and hour work is not found Besides, noted that the child labor is defined by the extent definition, is not separated by the specific type of activities The paper uses the parental education as proxies for parental income with assuming that the higher grade that parents obtaining, the lower child labor because of impacts of luxury axiom effect (Basu & Van, 1998) The study reveals only the significant impact of the father education on the child labor in both functions This can reflect the status of the more important role of the father in the household, is slightly popular in the Vietnam sociality where the head of household belongs to the father commonly While the mother education does not present a significant result in this function As variables used to control the impact of the parental income on child labor, the parental employment presents the slightly interesting result One additional time, the result is only significant for the father's employment variables Particularly, both cases of the father working on the agricultural field or non-agricultural field, the child is likely to participate to work relative more than the other (e.g the father who is unemployment or does house chore) This can explain that when households have the father unemployment, the opportunities for their children to work is small In other words, if the father has an employment, he has to spend more time for outside of work, and then the child perhaps spends more time to capture the domestic work Besides, with the large of work volume, the parents can push their children to work forward together as an assistant Additionally, the marginal effect of farther working on the agriculture sector is larger than compared with that of father belonging to the non-agriculture field compared with otherwise, stand at the level of 10.2 % and 9.1%, respectively for the first column of Table The similar result is also found by Parikh & Sadoulet (2005) where they research the relationship between the parental occupation and child labor in Brazil Household size and poor household variables are representative of the household characteristics showing positive and significant results in both the function Relating the household size, the bigger household is the higher expenditure The demand for food and non-food might increase in the family having many individuals, this can require children engage in the labor market and raise their work hour in order to find income or assistant adults Besides, the large household can include the few dependent individuals such as younger children and grandparents, this takes more time for caring Additionally, older children have to capture the domestic work while their parents spend more time on outside employment Following the marginal effect of household size, in the initial point at 30%, the number of people in the household increases person, the probability that child participates to work increase 2.3%, responding with 0.19 hour increasing with fixed other variables Regarding the economic status of households, poverty is found as the basic factor having the positive impacts on child labor (Ray, 2000; Dumas, 2013) The child labor is expected rising if the child resides in the poor family A dummy of the poor household indicates an increasing significantly on child labor in the participation probability and child work hour as well In particular, the poor household experiences a rise of 5.3% compared with others from the given point of 30%, responding with 0.43 hour per day To control other shocks that also impact on the household consequence not only from health shocks, the crop shock is employed in the model and expected to obtain a positive effect on child labor The paper reveals that when households experience the crop shocks, it can increase the participation of the child around 5.4% from 30% of the beginning probability However, crop shocks not present the significant relation in the second step of the model Asset holdings and access to credit are expected reduce the child labor, used as a buffering mechanism to households coping with risks The paper uses interaction variables to consider the buffering effects of asset holding and access to credit on child labor Asset holdings present the positive impact on the child labor reduction in both functions, is the same result with research of Bandara et al (2015) In the participation function, asset holdings is forward a reduction of child labor with the value of marginal effect standing at 24.6% from the 30% of the given probability if households occur health shocks While without health shocks, the impact of health shocks on child labor is simply the wealth impact on the mitigating child labor remaining the probability at 27.9% from the 30% of the given probability, meaning a decrease of child work participation 2.1% Considering the degree of child labor, the significant relation is only found in the asset holding variable, the interaction variable indicates an insignificant relation Households holding some durable asset is likely to employ less child labor Particularly, if a 100% change in the value of assets generates a decrease of 16 hours each day, is slightly the interesting result In other words, asset holdings keep households standing in the position with the more positive power to coping with the negative impact of health shocks on child labor For example, households can obtain income from selling or leasing their asset without increasing child work hour Furthermore, when households experience health shocks, basing on their high value of asset holdings, impacts of health shocks might be not enough to push their consumption to the minimal level, and then it is not necessary to increase child labor Additionally, durable asset represents like a collateral asset to enhance the ability the loans Regarding the ability of access credit, the paper is not found the significant relation between child labor and access to credit in both estimated functions In the study of Bandara et al (2015), using asset index in the estimate, the buffering effect of the asset on total child work hour is found in the case that households face with health shocks However, a dummy of having a bank account presents an insignificant with the buffering effect Similar to the expectation, the child who lives in the rural area is higher significantly compared with the urban area However, the impact is only found in the participation function, this can support for the assumption that the region only impacts on the decision send the child on to work or not, but not impact on the how much time the child has to work The probability of children living in the urban area to engage the labor force is smaller compared with children living in the rural area The result makes sense with previous studies (Ahmed, 1999; Bachman, 2000; Brown, 2002) The urban child might have more opportunities to join to study as well as developing skill program Besides, with higher living standard, the pressure to push the child to work is not large in urban families While many rural households in Vietnam still remain in the low or middle income, adults have to work outside with many hours, and then, the child has to capture the domestic work, stead of adults Besides, with income pressure, the child can work to add the household's income as well as assistant parents Another reason, the rural area in Vietnam accounts for the large demand for low skill labor, especially, in the agricultural sector, and then child labor can be used to fill this demand The child labor also has the significant difference in the area that household located Using Mekong River Delta as the basic region, all of the region variables indicate the positive significant coefficient It argues that children that live in Northern Uplands, Red River Delta, and Central Coastal are prone to have more probability to participate in work than children living in Mekong River Delta The marginal effect presents the large probability in the difference of child labor decision For example, the probability of the child living in the Northern Uplands will tend to work more than that of Mekong River Delta around 33% This is slightly interesting to choose and apply the improvement of child labor in these areas For the marginal effect in Table 8, it is noticed that the initial point at 50% presents the highest probability and larger relatively compare with others because the participation function approaches the probit model with the assumption of a normal distribution (Greene, 2012) Considering the level of 30% and 50%, it can be recognized that if the initial point where the probability of child labor participation is larger, the marginal effect of variables is larger without caring the sign of the effect CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS The paper studies the relationship between child labor and health shocks, using the Vietnam Young Lives Dataset in 2006 and 2009 Heckman’s selection model is employed to reduce the problem of the truncated sample as well as bias problems Approaching the two-step process of the household decisions relating child labor, the paper finds that health shocks create the negative impact on the child labor participation (e.g increasing the probability of the child labor participation) but not find the significant effect on the child work hour It is noted that in the participation function, the magnitude of the impact of health shocks is cushioned by the impact of the asset holding, the probability of the child labor participation creases to 30,4% from the initial point of 30% Besides, asset holdings play an important role in Vietnam households to cope with health shocks, are significant statistically both the functions In the participation estimate, asset holdings reduce the probability of the child labor participation to 27.9% and 24.6% from the initial level of 30% if households not experience health shocks and occurring health shocks respectively It takes into account that asset holdings present a buffering effect on health shocks in this function but not in that of the child work hour In the child work hour function, when other variables not change, when the value of asset is double, the child work hour drops to 16 hour per day Both households residing in the rural area and belonging to poor households show the negative impact on the child labor participation and the child work hour, meaning increase child labor Additionally, the father plays a primary role in the household decision-making, including decisions relating to child labor It takes into account that child labor is really different among the different region where Mekong River Delta presents the lowest level for child labor when households meet health shocks In the other words, the probabilities of the child labor participation for children living in other regions are larger than the base region Mekong River Delta The results of the study can propose to some directions on the development policy Because health shocks increase child labor, especially for children who live in the rural and poor households where there are the existence of the potential low-skill labor as well as low-income Besides, the asset plays an important role to control the negative impacts of health shocks on child labor, then the household with low asset holdings will face 40 more difficulties than others Therefore, the policy that support the program to reducing the 40 poverty should be noticed In the other side, improving the ability to approach the public health service as well as providing the health insurance package can help households covering the negative consequence of health shocks From that, the pressure of health shocks on households might be reduce and they would have more the ability to protect their children from risks Furthermore, because of the important role of the father in Vietnam households, the program to improve the reveal of the father about the child development can help reducing the child labor Additionally, the older child in the Vietnam have to spend more time for work, it seems slightly naturally Noted that they also face more pressure from studying where there are higher requirements It means that parents should spend more their concerns the balance between their children’s education and work It should be noted that this paper can also contain several limitations regarding the dataset, choosing variables as well as research scope Due to the lack of continuous variables in dataset, the study uses a slightly large dummy Besides, the percentage of member death in the sample is very small, and then, the study ignores to discuss the impact of health shocks with several dimensions, only using a general definition Thus, this is noted that the paper can dive into with several dimensions for both subjects to consider issues with multi-direction A further analysis is to research to explore more detail with specific types of health shocks as well as child labor would be to consider 41 REFERENCES Ahmed, I (1999) Getting rid of child labour Economic and Political Weekly, 1815-1822 Alam, K., & Mahal, A (2014) Economic impacts of health shocks on households in low and middle income countries: a review of the literature Globalization and health, 10(1), 21 Alam, S A (2015) Parental health shocks, child labor and educational outcomes: Evidence from Tanzania Journal of health economics, 44, 161-175 Apps, P F., Kabátek, J., Rees, R., & van Soest, A (2012) Labor supply heterogeneity and demand for child care of mothers with young children Bachman, S L (2000) A new economics of child labor: Searching for answers behind the headlines Journal of International Affairs, 545-572 Baland, J M., & Robinson, J A (2000) Is child labor inefficient? Journal of Political Economy, 108(4), 663-679 Bales, S (2013) Impact of health shocks on household welfare in Vietnam—Estimates using fixed effects estimation Institute of Health Policy & Management (HEFPA) Working Paper, 18 Bandara, A., Dehejia, R., & Lavie-Rouse, S (2015) The impact of income and nonincome shocks on child labor: evidence from a panel survey of Tanzania World development, 67, 218-237 Basu, K (2006) Labor Laws and Labor Welfare in the Context of the Indian Experience In Poverty, Inequality and Development (pp 183-204) Springer US Basu, K., & Tzannatos, Z (2003) The Global Child Labor Problem: What we know and what can we do? The world bank economic review, 17(2), 147-173 Basu, K., & Van, P H (1998) The economics of child labor American economic review, 412-427 Bazen, S., & Salmon, C (2010) The impact of parental health on child labor: the case of Bangladesh Economics Bulletin, 30(4), 2549-2557 Becker, G S (1965) A Theory of the Allocation of Time The economic journal, 493-517 Beegle, K (2005) Labor effects of adult mortality in Tanzanian households Economic Development and Cultural Change, 53(3), 655-683 Beegle, K., Dehejia, R H., & Gatti, R (2003) Child labor, income shocks, and access to credit Beegle, K., Dehejia, R H., & Gatti, R (2006) Child labor and agricultural shocks Journal of Development economics, 81(1), 80-96 Bonfrer, I., & Gustafsson-Wright, E (2016) Health shocks, coping strategies and foregone healthcare among agricultural households in Kenya Global public health, 1-22 Brown, D K., Deardorff, A V., & Stern, R M (2002) The determinants of child labor: theory and evidence School of Public Policy, University of Michigan Cain, M (1982) Perspectives on family and fertility in developing countries Population Studies, 36(2), 159-175 Cigno, A., Rosati, F C., & Guarcello, L (2002) Does globalization increase child labor? World Development, 30(9), 1579-1589 Diamond, C., & Fayed, T (1998) Evidence on substitutability of adult and child labour The Journal of Development Studies, 34(3), 62-70 Dillon, A (2012) Child labour and schooling responses to production and health shocks in northern Mali Journal of African economies, ejs025 Dinku, Yonatan M "Health Shocks and Child Time Allocation Decisions of Households: Evidence from Ethiopia." Dumas, C (2013) Market imperfections and child labor World development, 42, 127-142 Eckstein, Z., & Lifshitz, O (2011) Dynamic female labor supply Econometrica, 79(6), 16751726 Edmonds, E V (2007) Child labor Handbook of development economics, 4, 3607-3709 Edmonds, E V., & Pavcnik, N (2005) Child labor in the global economy The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1), 199-220 Edmonds, E., & Pavcnik, N (2002) Does globalization increase child labor? Evidence from Vietnam (No w8760) National Bureau of Economic Research Edmonds, E., & Turk, C (2004) Child labor in transition in Vietnam Economic Growth, Poverty and Household Welfare in Vietnam, Washington DC: World Bank, 505-550 Emerson, P M., & Knabb, S D (2007) Fiscal policy, expectation traps, and child labor Economic Inquiry, 45(3), 453-469 Farrell, P., & Fuchs, V R (1982) Schooling and health: the cigarette connection Journal of health economics, 1(3), 217-230 Gebru, B., & Bezu, S (2014) Environmental resource collection: implications for children's schooling in Tigray, northern Ethiopia Environment and Development Economics, 19(02), 182-200 Gertler, P., & Gruber, J (2002) Insuring consumption against illness The American Economic Review, 92(1), 51-70 Gertler, P., Levine, D I., & Moretti, E (2009) Do microfinance programs help families insure consumption against illness? Health economics, 18(3), 257-273 Hien, V M (2012) Investigating the “Wealth Paradox” on Child Labor: A Case Study of rural areas in Vietnam Preliminary version International Labour Organization (ILO) (2013) World report on child labour: Economic vulnerability, social protection and the fight against child labour Geneva, Swizerland: Author Islam, A., & Maitra, P (2012) Health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households: Does microcredit have a role to play? Journal of development economics, 97(2), 232243 Islam, A., & Maitra, P (2012) Health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households: Does microcredit have a role to play? Journal of development economics, 97(2), 232243 Jacoby, H G., & Skoufias, E (1997) Risk, financial markets, and human capital in a developing country The Review of Economic Studies, 64(3), 311-335 Kadiyala, S., Quisumbing, A., Rogers, B., & Webb, P (2009) The impact of prime age adult mortality on child survival and growth in rural Ethiopia World Development, 37(6), 11161128 Khan, F U (2010) Economic consequences of health shocks and coping strategies: Evidence from urban poor households in Bangladesh Erasmus University Kruger, D I (2007) Coffee production effects on child labor and schooling in rural Brazil Journal of development Economics, 82(2), 448-463 Levison, D., Anker, R., Ashraf, S., & Barge, S (1998) Is child labor really necessary in Indias carpet industry? [Unpublished] 1994 Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America Miama Florida May 5-7 1994 Mitra, S., Palmer, M., Mont, D., & Groce, N (2015) Can households cope with health shocks in Vietnam? Health economics Mohanan, M (2013) Causal effects of health shocks on consumption and debt: Quasiexperimental evidence from bus accident injuries Review of Economics and Statistics, 95(2), 673681 Morduch, J (1999) Between the state and the market: Can informal insurance patch the safety net? The World Bank Research Observer, 14(2), 187-207 Mulligan, C B., & Rubinstein, Y (2004) The closing of the gender gap as a Roy model illusion (No w10892) National Bureau of Economic Research Nakamura, A., & Nakamura, M (1991) Children and female labour supply: A survey of econometric approaches In Female Labour Market Behaviour and Fertility (pp 213-236) Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg O'Donnell, O., Rosati, F C., & Van Doorslaer, E (2005) Health effects of child work: Evidence from rural Vietnam Journal of Population Economics, 18(3), 437-467 Parikh, A., & Sadoulet, E (2005) The effect of parents' occupation on child labor and school attendance in Brazil Ranjan, P (1999) An economic analysis of child labor Economics letters, 64(1), 99-105 Ranjan, P (2001) Credit constraints and the phenomenon of child labor Journal of development economics, 64(1), 81-102 Ray, R (2000) Child labor, child schooling, and their interaction with adult labor: Empirical evidence for Peru and Pakistan The World Bank Economic Review, 14(2), 347-367 Rosati, F C., & Tzannatos, Z (2000) Child labor in Vietnam The World Bank: mimeo Shimamura, Y., & Lastarria-Cornhiel, S (2010) Credit program participation and child schooling in rural Malawi World Development, 38(4), 567-580 Strauss, J., & Thomas, D (1995) Human resources: Empirical modeling of household and family decisions Handbook of development economics, 3, 1883-2023 The Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (2013) Circular No 10/2013/TTBLDTBXH The lists of jobs and workplaces in which the employment of minor persons is prohibited Van Minh, H., Phuong, N T K., Saksena, P., James, C D., & Xu, K (2013) Financial burden of household out-of pocket health expenditure in Viet Nam: findings from the National Living Standard Survey 2002–2010 Social science & medicine, 96, 258-263 Viet Nam’s Institute of Labour, ILO (2012) The Viet Nam National Child Labour Survey 2012 Vietnam’s Prime Minister (2016) Decision No 1023/QD-TT Approval of Prevention Program to Minimize Child Labor During the Period 2016 – 2020 Wagstaff, A (2007) The economic consequences of health shocks: evidence from Vietnam Journal of health economics, 26(1), 82-100 Wainwright, F., & Newman, C (2011) Income shocks and household risk-coping strategies: evidence from rural Vietnam Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion paper, (358) Yamano, T., & Jayne, T S (2004) Measuring the impacts of working-age adult mortality on small-scale farm households in Kenya World Development, 32(1), 91-119 Yilma, Z., Mebratie, A., Sparrow, R., Abebaw, D., Dekker, M., Alemu, G., & Bedi, A S (2014) Coping with shocks in rural Ethiopia Journal of Development Studies, 50(7), 1009-1024 APPENDIX Figure A1: Distribution of children from 5-17 years old participating in Economic Activities (EA) in Vietnam (2012) Source: Viet Nam National Child Labour Survey (2012) Table A1: The correlation matrix healthshock poverty hhsize age age2 boy mom_grade dad_grade dad_dead mom_dead dad_job mom_job cropshock urban healthshock 1.00 poverty 0.07 1.00 hhsize age 0.07 0.06 1.00 0.03 -0.05 -0.04 age2 0.03 -0.04 -0.04 0.99 1.00 boy 0.04 0.01 -0.04 -0.01 -0.01 1.00 mom_grade -0.07 -0.23 -0.24 0.06 0.06 -0.03 dad_grade -0.02 -0.22 -0.23 0.06 0.05 -0.01 0.58 1.00 dad_dead 0.05 0.09 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.03 -0.04 -0.13 1.00 mom_dead 0.05 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.00 -0.02 -0.06 -0.01 0.10 1.00 dad_job -0.02 -0.08 -0.25 0.06 0.06 0.01 0.21 0.38 -0.03 0.02 1.00 mom_job -0.03 -0.07 -0.14 0.07 0.07 -0.02 0.31 0.22 0.01 0.00 0.24 1.00 cropshock 0.08 0.04 0.04 0.05 0.05 0.00 -0.10 -0.09 0.01 -0.01 -0.11 -0.08 1.00 urban 0.08 0.00 0.07 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.32 0.29 0.03 -0.02 0.20 0.27 -0.19 1.00 region1 region2 region3 ln_asset 1.00 1.00 region1 0.01 0.14 0.12 -0.07 -0.06 0.00 -0.26 -0.25 0.01 0.05 -0.18 -0.12 0.07 -0.20 1.00 region2 -0.09 -0.05 -0.11 0.02 0.02 -0.01 0.22 0.14 0.01 -0.02 0.01 0.02 0.04 -0.25 -0.23 1.00 region3 0.16 -0.04 0.09 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.11 0.18 0.00 -0.01 0.16 0.14 -0.01 0.56 -0.37 -0.45 ln_asset -0.11 -0.39 0.00 0.15 0.14 -0.02 0.41 0.37 -0.07 0.01 0.15 0.20 -0.05 0.24 -0.16 0.04 0.13 1.00 0.08 0.07 -0.01 0.05 0.05 -0.03 -0.03 -0.02 0.00 -0.02 -0.03 -0.05 0.07 -0.08 -0.05 0.08 -0.02 -0.09 loans loans 1.00 1.00 ... the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention (Ratifications of C182) in 2000 and Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment of ILO (C138) in 2000 In the internal nation, the Vietnamese... buffering effect of asset holdings and access to credit are existence to cushion the impact of health shocks on child labor The main findings indicate health shocks only impact on the decision send... with the illness of the mother during the last month Similarly, Dillon (2012) also finds the significant impacts of health shocks on child work In particular, if the illness occurs in the other children