Abstract:
Child labor participation is the engagement of a child indifferent jobs based in payment or no payment to sustain life and getting worse throughout the world. The aim of this study was to identify determinants of child labor participation and its impacts on their educational achievement in Ambo Town. The research employed explanatory design and implemented both qualitative and quantitative approaches. For attainment of objectives of the research, multi stage random sampling procedure was used, and primary data was obtained using survey questionnaires from 152 randomly sampled students of three elementary schools and two secondary schools in Ambo town while 10 KII participants selected from three government offices, one secondary school and one elementary school. The findings of the study reveal that children’s labor participation in different sectors was common in the study area, while determinant factors were identified as means of life, school fees, pocket money, family head factors, social unrest, absence of guardian and other factors. Furthermore, the binary logistic regression result shows that child labor participation was determined by poverty factors, pocket money requirements, educational fee payments, child transportation, means of life, and future price expectations, which in turn negatively impact their educational achievement in terms of average result score, doing homework and program attendance to some extent and magnitude in Ambo town. Propensity Score Matching was conducted and the result shows that there is strong negative relationship between child labor participation and their educational achievement in the study area. Based on the above findings, it was recommended to government bodies, children guardian parents, children with labor participation, and other stakeholders to avoid early childhood labor participation, improve family income level, continuously identify factors leading to child labor participation and provide training on determinant factors of child labor participation in relation to educational performance and contribute to social capital development. Moreover, it was recommended to reduce status of child labor participation continuously in the town.
Key Words: Ambo, child labor
