The allocation of children's time in Mexico and Peru

Within the context of significant economic and educational changes, the objective of this paper is to investigate tendencies since the 1980s in the allocation of children’s time between school and work in Mexico and Peru. As measured by school enrollment rates, which have been rising in both countries since the 1980s, the picture looks fairly rosy. This paper attempts to look deeper than mere enrollment statistics by examining actual attendance and time spent in school and on work. We begin in Section I with a general discussion of the economic factors affecting child time allocation. In Section II, we move on to a discussion of what has happened since the 1980s in Mexico and Peru. Drawing on household survey data from these two countries, we offer new evidence about school attendance, labor force participation, and hours worked by those in the labor force. We also discuss the ability of the economic factors reviewedin Section I to explain the observed changes in time allocation. This discussion is exploratory in nature and is primarily intended to stimulate discussion and further thinking. We are in the process of developing and implementing econometric models to more rigorously test the hypotheses outlined in Section 1. JEL Classification-JEL: J13, J22, I21