Gender Disparity in Household Preference for Child Labor in Bangladesh

Abstract

Child labor and gender discrimination are striking issues in developing
countries like Bangladesh. The socio-cultural setting that encourages the
preference of son and patriarchy in Bangladesh calls for a national study of
the gender dynamics of child labor. This research aims to explore the
household’s preference of gender in sending their children to the labor
market within the age range of 5-17 years using data collected from
Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2016 of Bangladesh. The
result from the binary logistic regression suggests that boys are significantly
more likely to be the earners compared to girls in Bangladesh. Other
potential factors having significant association with child labor were found
to be age, education, school enrollment, mother’s educational attainment
and working status, family income, household size, head of the household,
and poverty status. The bargaining power of the household shows that
children are less likely to be laborers when the father is the head of the
household compared to the mother, controlling for other variables.