Maternal labor and child school performance: an analyze of schooling advance probability

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of maternal labor on the probability of school progres¬sion for Brazilian children with age between 10 and 14 years. Two sub-samples from the data set of the Monthly Employment Survey (Pesquisa Mensal de Emprego – PME), referring to periods from 1986 to 1995 and from 2002 to 2006 were used. The results show that, for the oldest sample, maternal ingression in the labor market does not influence the child´s school progression probability. However, from 2002 to 2006, the results are more expressive: maternal labor impacts school progression probability negatively in 7.1 percentage points. This divergent behavior may be attributed to: i ) changes in PME methodology; ii ) difference in sub-samples with respect to the per capita income variable; iii ) changes in school progres¬sion/repetition “rules”; or, finally, iv ) increase in maternal education levels between the analyzed periods. Future studies may identify the importance of these elements and their contribution to our final results