School Enrollment and a Mother’s Ability to Work: A Study of Developing Nations

Labor market models serve as important theoretical tools when analyzing individual barriers to employment in developed nations. By expanding these models to include the diverse circumstances of rural women in developing countries, social scientists have taken a step in understanding the value of women’s time in these areas. The resulting literature distinguishes between market and nonmarket labor, since the participation of women in formal, or off-farm, work often follows increased freedom from the most basic tasks of farm life. Of these most basic tasks, poor, rural women often spend a significant amount of time procuring water for household use. This observation has elicited a strong focus on development outcomes attached to  investments in infrastructure related to water and has guided empirical work on whether women enter the labor market in response to improvements in infrastructure. The manner in which the formal employment of mothers affects their children is of added importance.

Gayatri Koowal and Dominique Van De Walle of the World Bank expand this area of scholarship in their recent work “Access to Water, Women’s Work, and Child Outcomes.”  Koowal and Van De Walle test whether there is a relationship between water infrastructure investments and labor market access and whether entrance into the workforce allows a mother to provide goods such as schooling and healthcare to her children. In seeking out evidence for this position, the authors remain aware of an additional likelihood. Namely, that less time needed for chores constitutes a welfare improvement for mothers, but certain household or farm responsibilities might fall to children and negatively impact their quality of life if mothers enter the workforce.

Many prior studies falter because infrastructure investments often relate to other economic factors affecting women’s participation in the labor market and this participation commonly stems from a variety of household-level characteristics that have little to do with time-saving technology. To avoid these complications, the authors narrow their focus to infrastructure that reduces the time needed for women to collect water and use enrollment in school as an indicator of childhood well-being. Their geographic focus  includes rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Community-level data in these countries helps to determine if distance from a reliable water source relates to overall reductions in the unpaid labor of women, an increase in paid work, and the enrollment of children in local schools.

Koowal and Van De Walle’s observations show that sizeable reductions in nonmarket farm work follow greater access to water resources. For example, the number of women in Morocco and Pakistan participating in unpaid work on their own farms decreases by 12 to 18 percent as the time needed to gather water decreases by one hour. In prior studies, the effects of these reductions become confused in the attempt to connect time-savings to female participation in a formal labor market. The authors’ study addresses this confusion by citing increased domestic activity as the primary result of reductions in nonmarket farm work and show that such time investments can positively contribute to child schooling. Instead of using free time to obtain wage employment, mothers engage in domestic tasks once reserved for their children.

In a majority of the nine countries examined, findings suggest that infrastructure improvements increase school enrollment in two ways that do not involve a mother’s access to wage work. First, water infrastructure improvements free children from household duties. This affects girls the most as they more often assist their mothers in household duties and gathering water. Secondly, in allowing mothers to commit more time to non-farm domestic activities that normally keep children home from school, infrastructure increases the available time for schooling and, thereby, positively affects enrollment. Neither of these improvements in enrollment requires a mother gain outside employment.

More straightforwardly, a policy that increases infrastructure improvements can relieve families from farm work and positively benefit children without needing to improve women’s access to the labor force.