Hours Supplied of Cambodian Child Labor and School Enrolment: Simple Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Policy Implications

This paper aims to seek the determinants of hours supplied of child labor in Cambodia. On the basic of simple theoretical and empirical model building from existing literatures, we have estimated the latent decision of parents on hours supplied of their children. Because this hours supplied are censored at zero hours and depend on the enrolment status of each individual child, therefore, we use simultaneous tobit and probit to find the determinants of hours supplied and enrolment of children by the Maximum Likelihood estimate. Given a structure of our model, it allows us to estimate marginal effects of latent status of children which is rarely discussed in literature and it enable us to see dynamics of child labor in Cambodia. We found that only after completing primary education, thus parents' education has impact on the probability of child's schooling and reduce hours worked of the child. Increasing household's income does increase the human capital formation of the child. Importantly child labor (except worse form of child labor) does help increasing human capital formation of the child in the context of developing economy like Cambodia.