Child Labour versus Human Capital: The Ugly Face of Face Value

This study on Child Labour versus Human Capital: The Ugly Face of Face Value is out to investigate the effect of child labour on educational attainment in Cameroon. It looks at the child labourer via a vis education, taking into cognisance the fact that non-schooling could be a cause as well as a consequence of child labour. When the parent sends the child out to work he sees just the wage that the child labourer brings home forgetting the forgone alternative of schooling and the expected returns of education. This study makes use of the Cameroon household Consumption survey data (ECAM IV) collected by the National Institute of Statistics in Cameroon in 2014. The Fourth Cameroon Household Survey (ECAM IV) is a national operation on data collection, processing and analysis which is carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS). In order to achieve our objective, we specify a multinomial logit model since the dependent variable (educational attainment) is a categorical variable. The results of our findings revealed that child labour has a significant negative impact on educational attainment.