Paper short abstract:

Understanding the pathway through which weather shocks impact child labour is crucial. This paper analyzes the impact of rainfall shocks on child labour . Rainfall shock impact on child labour through adult labour, and this varies across states with differing levels of gender inequality.

Paper long abstract:

Understanding the pathway through which weather shocks impact child labour is crucial for effective policy formulation. This pathway may involve a direct impact of weather shocks on child labour, an indirect influence through its effects on adult labour or a simultaneous impact both directly and indirectly. This paper analyzes the impact of exogenous rainfall and temperature shocks on child labour employing the Sequential g-estimation model. I employed a panel of household data on smallholder farmers in rural Nigeria spanning the years 2012-2018 combined with high-resolution weather data from Climatic Research Unit Time Series version 4.05 (CRU TS v. 4.05) and information on gender norms from Afrobarometer and the DHS. The findings of this study show that most of the children are involved in on-farm activities, with more boys in on-farm employment, whereas girls dominate in off-farm employment. Deficit shock significantly increased the on-farm labour supply for boys through the mediating channel (adult labour in hours per week) and significantly increased more for the boys in gender-unequal states. On the other hand, excessive rainfall shock significantly increased the off-farm labour supply for girls in gender-equal states and a decrease in gender-unequal states. This suggests that the girl child in gender-unequal states are confined by the norms to be home and engage in household chores. Excessive rainfall shock had no significant impact on the on-farm labour supply for both boys and girls. These results show the varying impact of rainfall shocks on child labour across states with differing levels of gender inequality.