Reducing child labour and improving education in cocoa-growing communities: experimental evidence on the impact of school kits from Ghana

Last registered on March 30, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Reducing child labour and improving education in cocoa-growing communities: experimental evidence on the impact of school kits from Ghana
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010918
Initial registration date
March 29, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 30, 2023, 4:03 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
ETH Zurich

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
ETH Zurich
PI Affiliation
University of Ghana

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2022-11-14
End date
2024-02-01
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Worldwide 1 in 10 children are engaged in child labour. Often, these children do not attend school regularly; thus, their current and future well-being is threatened. In Ghana, more than 50% of children in cocoa-growing areas are engaged in child labour—more than half a million children. A common approach to reducing child labour by the industry and policy is to tackle households' financial
constraints while promoting schooling. Often children are provided with "school kits" that include necessary school supplies such as a uniform, bag, shoes, books, and writing materials. Previous research has only looked at the impact of providing individual school items on education with limited results, and no study has analysed whether comprehensive school kits addressing the financial constraints of buying school equipment reduce child labour. Yet, children in low-income settings often suffer from a shortage of multiple school materials, which might be one of the reasons why children miss school in cocoa communities. This study conducts an experiment to examine the impact of school kits on child labour, school attendance, learning and child well-being in cocoa communities in Ghana.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Asiedu , Edward , Isabel Günther and Erwin Lefoll. 2023. "Reducing child labour and improving education in cocoa-growing communities: experimental evidence on the impact of school kits from Ghana." AEA RCT Registry. March 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10918-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Sponsors

Partner

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Children in primary 5 and 6 in the treatment group will receive a comprehensive school kit at the beginning of the new school year in February 2023. Children in the control group will receive a school kit after the end of the experiment in February 2024 (i.e., post-endline data collection). School kits will contain the following items: one school uniform, one set of shoes, one school bag, 10 exercise books, five notebooks, 10 pens and one mathematical set at a value of 600 GHS/kit.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2023-01-15
Intervention End Date
2023-12-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Work:

- Child labour (binary variable): child accomplished at least one hazardous activity or experienced one hazardous situation in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months. The list of hazardous activities or situations is defined by the national legislation in Ghana, and in line with relevant ILO conventions No. 138 and No. 182.
- Hazardous activity (binary variable): child accomplished at least one hazardous activity in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months.
- Number of hazardous activities accomplished by the child in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months.
- Hazardous situation (binary variable): child experienced at least one hazardous situation in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months.
- Number of hazardous situations experienced by the child in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months.
- Number of non-hazardous household tasks accomplished by the child in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months.

Education:

- Child school attendance
- Number of times the child missed school in the last school week.
- Number of times the child arrived late/left early in the last school week.
- Child learning: computed from literacy and numeracy questions/tests.

Well-being:

- Child well-being: index of questions on self-reported measures of children’s psychological well-being.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Injury:

- Injury (binary variable): the child was ill or injured in the last 7 days, 6 months or 12 months.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We apply a clustered RCT, where 60 primary schools are randomly assigned to a treatment group (receiving school kits) or a control group (receiving nothing), stratified at the regional level (Ashanti or Eastern). Half are selected from four districts in the Eastern region (Abwakwa South, Ayensuano, Suhum, West Akim) and the other half from two districts in the Ashanti region (Asante Akim Central and Asante Akim South). The primary schools are randomly selected from cocoa-growing communities in which, to our knowledge, no programmes are actively present to combat child labour and improve education. To limit spillovers and for ethical reasons, we restrict our sample to communities where only one primary school is present and treat all children in the selected class(es) irrespective of whether their families report receiving their main income from cacao farming. We will target children at the end of grades 4-5 (approximately aged 12 years old) at baseline who are, according to the literature, most at risk of transitioning into child labour and forgoing formal education to overcome financial challenges.

The research is conducted in three research phases. In Phase 1, we collect baseline data on children, their caregivers, and headteachers in November-December 2022, when children are more at risk of being involved in child labour. In Phase 2, we take the body and footwear measurements of children in the treatment group in January 2023 and distribute the school kits in February 2023, during the start of the new school year. In Phase 3, endline data is collected one year after the baseline in November-December 2023.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomisation done in office by a computer using Stata.
Randomization Unit
School
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
60 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
1800 pupils + their respective caregivers (1800 caregivers) + 60 headteachers (one per school) = 3660 respondents.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
30 schools (900 pupils, 900 caregivers, 30 headteachers) in the control group and 30 schools (900 pupils, 900 caregivers, 30 headteachers) in the treatment group.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The sample size is calculated for a power of 80% at a 5% significance level, for an intra-cluster correlation of 0.085 and an effect size of 10 percentage points reduction in child labour from a current level of 77% in cocoa communities in the Ashanti and Eastern regions for children aged at least nine years old in primary school in Ghana (defined as being in child labour in the last 12 months). The power calculations were done without any control variables that could potentially reduce heterogeneity, hence the minimum detectable effect size with the sample size.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Commission at ETH Zurich
IRB Approval Date
2022-09-22
IRB Approval Number
EK 2022-N-149
IRB Name
Ethics Committee for the Humanities at the University of Ghana
IRB Approval Date
2022-11-18
IRB Approval Number
ECH 067/ 22-23

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials