Trade- offs in children’s time allocation : Mixed support for embodied capital models of the demographic transition in Tanzania Sophie Hedges 1* , Rebecca Sear 1 , Jim Todd 1,2 , Mark Urassa 2 , & David W. Lawson 3 1 Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK 2 National Institute for Medical Research, Mwanza, Tanzania 3 Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA *Corresponding author. sophie.hedges@lshtm.ac.uk ABSTRACT Child ren’s time allo cation is fundamental to embodied capital models of the demographic transition. Yet few studies have directly investigated the impact of market integration on children’s time allocation in contemporary rural populations undergoing socioeconomic ‘modernization’ . We present a study of children’s time use in two communities in Mwanza, Tanzania, representing the extremes of a local rural-urban gradient. Consistent with embodied capital theory, market integration increases investment in education, reduces children’s work, and is associated with lower opportunity costs to schooling. However, these patterns apply primarily to boys, with herding work relatively incompatible with schooling. For girls, schooling is more readily combined with domestic chores. Furthermore, contrary to predictions, the strongest time allocation trade-offs are not between school and work, but between school and leisure time, particularly for girls. Mixed support for embodied capital models may partially explain why fertility decline has stalled in many low-income countries, despite education uptake. Higher opportunity costs to boy’s education in herding communities, may account for recent, unexpected trends of higher school enrolment for girls. 1
Finally, we advocate that international development programs consider the wellbeing implications of reduced leisure time triggered by market integration, particularly for girls maintaining a ‘double - shift’ of school and domestic work. KEYWORDS Education; children’s work; time allocation; e mbodied capital; market integration 2
1. INTRODUCTION 1 2 C hildren’s lives and adult expectations of childhood have changed dramatically during the 3 past half-century (Bledsoe et al. 1999; Zelizer 1985). The ide al ‘modern’ childhood is work - 4 free, care-free, and spent primarily in formal education (Abebe 2007; Ansell 2005; 5 Nieuwenhuys 1996). These aspirations are increasingly realized worldwide; 93% of primary- 6 school-aged children are estimated to be enrolled (UNESCO 2015) and children’s involvement 7 in work has rapidly declined (ILO 2013). ‘Embodied capital’ models of the demographic 8 transition conceptualize these trends as a functional response to changing perceived returns 9 to parental investment. Under these models, market integration incentivizes parents to invest 10 in education because it enhances adult income. However, schooling is costly, both directly 11 and through opportunity costs arising from the re- allocation of children’s time away from 12 productive work. This favors an emphasis on child ‘quality’ over quantity, leading to lower 13 fertility rates (Becker 1960; Kaplan 1996). A considerable body of research on fertility 14 patterns, much of it carried out by evolutionary demographers and anthropologists, supports 15 key tenets of this perspective (Lawson and Borgerhoff Mulder 2016; Sear et al. 2016). But 16 little research has directly examined the impact of market integration on parental decisions 17 to educate children, and the anticipated trade-offs between education and child work 18 (Hedges et al. 2016). 19 Classic economic and embodied capital perspectives on the demographic transition are 20 primarily informed by historical European patterns of socioeconomic and demographic 21 change, rather than contemporary transitions occurring in low-income countries. Such 22 accounts are vulnerable to the fallacy of the ‘developmental paradigm’; Thornton (2001) ’s 23 term for the assumption that societal change is linear and universal, with societies differing 3
24 only in their position along the same developmental trajectory. Thornton describes how this 25 model has conflated cause and effect, and led to the widely accepted view that changes from 26 ‘traditional’ family structures to ‘modern’ ones drive socioeconomic development (Thornton 27 2001). Thus, low fertility, gender equality and youth autonomy are framed as prerequisites 28 for economic development, while ‘traditional’ family structures are viewed as impediments 29 to ‘progress’. Development programs therefore promote family planning, female education, 30 and reduced work during childhood, as the key to both individual and societal wealth and 31 wellbeing. Yet contemporary economic and demographic transitions differ in several 32 important respects, not least the role of external agencies in changing both the real and 33 perceived costs and benefits of education and high fertility. The objective of this paper is to 34 assess the applicability of embodied capital theory to patterns of child time allocation in a 35 contemporary low-income, high-fertility setting in rural Tanzania. 36 Anthropology has a strong tradition of time allocation scholarship, emphasizing context- 37 dependency in the costs and benefits of alternative behavioral strategies. While many 38 anthropologists have collected detailed data on children’s time allocation (Bird and Bliege 39 Bird 2002; Bliege Bird and Bird 2002; Gurven, Kaplan, and Gutierrez 2006; Kramer 2002; Lancy 40 2012; Turke 1988), few studies have been conducted in settings where school attendance is 41 the norm (but cf. Mattison and Neill 2013). Relevant research in these settings has 42 predominantly been carried out by development economists concerned with minimizing 43 harmful ‘child labor’. However, this research most often defines ‘work’ as activities done to 44 generate cash income. Work generally done by women and children, including household 45 chores and childcare, is frequently overlooked in time use surveys (Esquivel et al. 2008). This 4
46 devalues household work, yet these duties may be time- and energy-consuming, essential to 47 household functioning, and disruptive of schooling (Ilahi 2000). 48 We present a novel study of children’s time allocation in two communities in northwestern 49 Tanzania, representing the extremes of a local rural-urban gradient. Departing from much of 50 the prior literature on this topic, we take a holistic perspective on children’s time allocation 51 throughout a complete day, including contributions to domestic and farm work, and leisure 52 time. In the next section we describe in more detail the embodied capital framework on 53 childhood and the demographic transition. We draw into this discussion the influence of the 54 developmental paradigm in shaping policy and interventions surrounding children’s work and 55 schooling in contemporary rural, low-income settings. We then elaborate on gender as a 56 determinant of parental investment and children’s time allocation, and highlight how the 57 value placed on market work by post-transition societies has led to gaps in our knowledge 58 about how girls’ time allocation may change with development. These sections lead to five 59 hypotheses derived from embodied capital theory regarding the impacts of market 60 integration and gender on (i) school enrollment, (ii) patterns of child work, and (iii) the trade- 61 offs between these activities. 1.1 EMBODIED CAPITAL AND MARKET INTEGRATION 62 63 Embodied capital theory assumes that c hildren’s time is allocated to different activities based 64 on perceived returns, whether that be immediate production, or long-term investment in 65 embodied capital (Gurven and Kaplan 2006). Embodied capital is defined as the skills, 66 knowledge, experience, physical growth and strength acquired during childhood and 67 adolescence, which increase adult social and reproductive success. Time allocation is 68 predicted to favor activities that improve long-term social and reproductive success, but there 5
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