Impact of mining and educational attainment: household engagement in mining as a determinant of school outcome
Date
2014-12
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Abstract
Education remains an important tool not only for individual productivity but also for the development of a country. Like all other things, however, the level of education one attains varies as a
result of the presence of other factors such as environment. A great deal of studies have examined school outcomes and its determinants, and these determinants vary depending on the preferences as well as the constraints faced by the household decision maker. In this study, the researchers examined the engagement in mining as one of these determinants to see the relationship between mining and schooling. Considering only households with children 21 years old or older to avoid censoring bias, we used a multinomial logit model with educational attainment measured as the highest grade completed of the eldest child to determine the impact of engagement in mining to the schooling of the children. Results suggest that engagement in mining has positive relationship with categories 2 and 6 of school outcome, which are elementary graduate and vocational course graduate respectively. However, this effect is very small, with 3 percent for category 2 and 0.9 percent for category 6. Further studies need to be made to confirm this results as it may also be due to the researchers' limitations in distinguishing households by
the number of people who engage in mining, as well as the limitation in determining those who engage in it as an employee, an employer or those who engage in it at subsistence level.
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Keywords
mining, educational attainment, schooling outcome, household decision-making