After school work in Mexico: competing for children's time and success? (vol 23, pg 299, 2003)

As nations extend obligatory schooling, policy makers often focus on getting working children to attend school, with less concern about their progress and achievement ounce enrolled. Missing from policy discussions is empirical support for the assumption that working students can succeed there, net of the family resources universally associated with greater achievement. In this analysis, we test the hypothesis that students' labor force activity is expected to have little negative impact on measure of academic achievement, but greater work activity is expected to affect children's performance negatively. After estimating regressions between child labor and academic outcomes, our findings indicate that, at least in the case of Mexico, policy makers may be justified in concerning themselves with enrolment rather than the achievement of children.