Author Name	Nankhuni, Flora Janet
Email Address	floran@sas.upenn.edu
Graduate Program	Agricultural Economics
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type	Dissertation
Date of Defense	2003-10-29
Committee	Jill L. Findeis, Committee Chair Gretchen T. Cornwell, Committee Member Stephen M. Smith, Committee Member Marc E. McDill, Committee Member David Shapiro, Committee Member
Availability	Open Access
Title	Environmental Degradation, Resource Scarcity and Children’s Welfare in Malawi: School Attendance, School Progress, and Children’s Health
Abstract	The thesis investigates the effects of natural resource scarcity on child quality, showing that long hours of work spent in fuel wood and water collection activities influence children’s education and health in Malawi. Malawi people are primarily rural and subsistent. More than 90% use firewood as their main source of cooking energy. However, Malawi experiences deforestation and water scarcity problems. These have significant consequences for the quality of people’s lives, particularly women and children who are primarily responsible for collection of natural resources. To investigate the effects on children’s schooling and health, data from 1997-98 Malawi Integrated Household Survey conducted by the Malawi National Statistics Office in conjunction with the International Food Policy Research Institute are used. Supplementing these are Malawi GIS fuel wood availability, forest cover and biomass assessment data and qualitative data obtained through focus group interviews with Malawian women. Bivariate probit models of school attendance or school progress with participation in natural resource-collection work are estimated to test and correct for potential endogeneity of these decisions. Potential endogeneity of resource-collection work hours is also corrected for, using two-stage conditional maximum likelihood (2SCML) estimation. A multinomial logit model of alternative work-schooling choices is also estimated. The research finds that children’s school attendance and school progress are negatively affected through increased work that results from scarcity of natural resources. Girls are disproportionately disadvantaged. Therefore, the traditional division of labor contributes to gender differentials in Malawi’s education. However, increased number of women in a child’s household partially mitigates the negative impact of natural resource-collection work. The results also suggest that inequalities in fuel wood availability across regions of Malawi may be causing regional disparities in education. These results establish an environment-education nexus in the population-environment-poverty interactions debate. The research also shows that young children’s health is negatively affected by natural resource scarcity, establishing a negative environmental degradation-child quality relationship. This is crucial for informing sustainable development policy efforts. The research also contributes to understanding the effects of domestic child labor on schooling. This is particularly important for sub-Saharan Africa where 95% of child labor is estimated to take place in homes.
Keywords	stunting child labor schooling hours of work natural resources Malawi
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