Reallocating children’s time: coping strategies after the 2010 Haiti earthquake

2.1 Effects of natural disasters on education and child labor

Modeling the impacts of natural disasters on human capital in a comprehensive manner is not straightforward. The literature have developed theoretical frameworks to model different pieces of the causal chain linking different shocks—including natural disasters—to proxy determinants of human capital and other dimensions of human welfare, but there is no consensus of whether natural disasters have consequences on the creation and use of human capital (Baez et al. 2010). The existing economic literature strongly suggests that the households’ capacity in poor countries to smooth consumption across time and states of nature is limited. This seems to be especially true in the case of large generalized shocks such as natural disasters, when some of the informal mechanisms of risk-sharing become less widespread (Jacoby and Skoufias 1997; Beegle et al. 2002). This section does not aim to review the whole existing findings at the household level on the impacts of natural disasters on human capital, and we cite only those studies which are directly related to the impact on education and child labor.⁷

The theoretical impact of natural disasters on schooling is ambiguous due the varying and sometimes contradicting effects involved. On the one hand, the damages or destruction of schools and complementary infrastructures and resources (e.g., roads and teachers) can worsen the whole education system. Additionally, if natural shocks worsen, the economic situation of households and the access to credit, insurance, or other coping mechanisms are limited; dropping children out of school may be the last resort to reduce outgoings (Jensen 2000; Jacoby and Skoufias 1997) or to increase household income by putting them to work or increasing their participation to domestic work activities (Basu and Van 1999; Edmonds 2007). Huisman and Smits (2009) argue this is specially the case in countries where laws regarding compulsory education are not strictly enforced, such as in Haiti. On the other hand, if a natural disaster changes the opportunity cost of sending children to school, through a reduction in market wages for example, or if international assistance increase the supply of education services (Adelman and Holland 2015), the direction of the overall effect remains unclear (Baez et al. 2010).

Empirically, it is complex to disentangle all these mechanisms. To the best of our knowledge, only one research tries to assess the effects of a large earthquake on child labor.⁸Santos (2007) finds that children in households most affected by the 2001 earthquake in El Salvador were three times more likely to work after the shock. The intensive margin results show an increase of their labor supply of about 32 h per week relative to children in control areas. Studies assessing the effects of other types of disasters (e.g., droughts, floods, rainfall shocks, hurricanes) find that these shocks are associated with declines in enrollment rates or delays in school enrollment (Alderman et al. 2006; Jensen 2000; Jacoby and Skoufias 1997). Many studies show that natural disasters are strongly correlated with an increase of workforce, including children, and more hours devoted to off-farm activities at the expense of lower wages (Jalan and Ravallion 1999; Beegle et al. 2003; De Janvry et al. 2006; Santos 2007; Baez and Santos 2007). Baez and Santos (2007) estimate that as a consequence of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua, child labor force participation increases in 8.5 percentage points (p.p.) and the proportion of children both enrolled in school and working more than doubled. Most of case studies evidence that the impact can be largely negative, and some of them show the potential detrimental effects can be long-lasting (Alderman et al. 2006). Others studies on human capital and shocks (not only natural disasters) further stress that educational achievement is highly path-dependent (Bustelo et al. 2012; Strauss and Thomas 2007).

2.2 Children’s time allocation in developing countries

Literature about children’s time allocation in developing countries point to a number of determinants of the demand for education and the supply of child labor. A detailed overview of recent developments of this literature can be found in Edmonds (2007), and a review with a more theoretical focus in Basu and Van (1999). As Basu and Van (1998) mention, the allocation of children’s time to non-labor activities (education or leisure) represents a luxury good for poor households, which can be consumed only once their income rises beyond a certain threshold. Sending children to work, in contrast to sending them to schools, carries negative consequences both for the children’s future well-being and, through the positive externalities of education on growth, for the growth of the society as a whole (Basu and Van 1999).

Theoretical and empirical studies on the main determinants of the household’s decision to send children to work rather than to school can be grouped into two main veins: the demand for education, introduced by Becker (1964), and the one that focuses on the impact of various constraints affecting the supply of child labor, the demand for education, or both simultaneously. According to Becker (1964)’s theory, whether to send their children to school is the result of a trade-off between the expected returns and the cost of education (e.g., tuition, material, compulsory uniform, transport, and opportunity cost). It predicts that children may work because the net returns relative to alternative uses of time such as school attendance are low (compared with its cost) and the returns to work experience are relatively larger. The second vein highlights the effect of various constraints on the allocation of children’s time between school and work (Bhalotra 2007; Grimm 2011). Imperfections in the markets for labor and land (Bhalotra and Heady 2003), poverty (Jensen and Nielsen 1997; Basu and Van 1998), and credit market imperfections (Jacoby and Skoufias 1997; Ranjan 2001; Cigno and Rosati 2006) are the main set of constraints explaining the emergence of child labor and the concomitant fall-off in school attendance (Dammert 2010; De Vreyer et al. 2013; Senne 2014). All these constraints, in addition to the degree of altruism of the decision-taker in the household (Baland and Robinson 2000), drive the final decision about the child’s time allocation. This framework suggests how an external negative shock might affect the households’ decision in developing countries. In fact, even where incentives favor education over work, a household may be obliged by budget constraint to send a child to work. When poverty constraints are binding, the opportunity cost of studying is too high and parents are due to send children to work rather than to school. Moreover, when capital markets are imperfect, this model predicts that even altruistic parents may sacrifice investments in children’s education.

The existing empirical research about child labor tend to focus on the effects of factors, either the characteristics of parents and their households (Basu et al. 2010; Buchmann 2000; Patrinos and Psacharopoulos 1997) or country level (Fan 2004; Levy 1985). This is problematic, since we know that the decisions of parents regarding work and schooling of their children are influenced by factors at the household level as well as by characteristics of the context in which the household is living (e.g., the local labor market and the available educational facility characteristics) (Huisman and Smits 2009). Webbink et al. (2013) develop a new framework including simultaneously three categories of child labor determinants: resources (Basu and Van 1998; Ranjan 2001), family factors (or structural factors) (Edmonds 2006), and cultural explanations (Delap 2001). We aimed at adding vulnerability as an additional dimension.

In our ex-post vulnerability assessment, our measure of vulnerability is not an expected degree of loss but is based on the observed (revealed) level of damage on dwellings.

3.1 Haitian context

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and ranks 161 among 186 countries in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme. Three years after the 2010 earthquake, poverty is still high, and particularly in rural areas, just over one third of the population barely managed to make ends meet (Herrera et al. 2014). According to the new national poverty line produced by the government of Haiti and based on the ECVMAS 2012, more than one in two Haitians was poor, living on less than $2.41, and one person in four was living below the national extreme poverty line of $1.23 a day. A comparison of household earnings (with the level of income deemed by households to be the minimum required to live) shows that nearly eight in ten households can be classified as “subjective poor” (Herrera et al. 2014). With a population of 10.4 million people,⁹ Haiti is also one of the most densely populated countries in Latin America. Half of the population is under 21 years old, and nearly 60% of Haitians have no more than primary school education. In 2012, almost 30% of 10–17-year-old children were not in school or dedicate only few hours to studying because they need to contribute to household income, work in the household, or do nothing (Zanuso et al. 2014).

Prior to the earthquake, the country had already one of the poorest education systems in the world. Right after its independence (in 1804), the importance of education was recognized and the first Constitution, promulgated in 1805, noted explicitly that “education shall be free. Primary education shall be compulsory. State education shall be free at every level.” These principles were never put into practice. The education offered to Haitian children was, and still is, inadequate in terms of quality, quantity, and accessibility (Lunde 2010). Both the direct costs of attending school (e.g., tuition and other fees, mandatory uniforms, transport, books) and the opportunity costs, particularly in the form of lost labor for the household, remain barriers to achieving universal primary enrollment and completion. The private education system has grown by default and continuously, from 20% in the 1959–1960 to 75% in 1995–1996 (Salmi 2000). In 1997, the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sport (MENJS) set out a National Education and Training Plan (PNEF) to reform the education system in Haiti. The reformed Haitian education system is used as reference here, even if some parts of the country, especially in rural areas, the traditional educational system still operates (Lunde 2010). In the reformed system, education comprises three core levels: (i) pre-school for 3 to 5 years old, not compulsory; (ii) primary education for 6 to 14 years old; and (iii) secondary education for 15 to 18 years old (see Table 7 in the Appendix). The legal age for admission to school is 6 years, and in the reformed system, children who go through normal progression complete primary at the age of 14. In fact, the last school census before the earthquake (2002–2003) highlighted that the average age of students in grade 6, for instance, was 16 years old, when the corresponding age for that grade should be 11 or 12 years old (Adelman and Holland 2015).

Even though the earthquake strongly affected the supply of education services, the number of schools were still larger in 2011–2012 than in 2002–2003. In 2002, Haiti counted with a total of 15,268 schools, of which 92% were nonpublic, accounting for more than 80% of enrolled students. The 2011–2012 census, conducted less than 2 years after the 2010 earthquake, counted 16,072 schools across the country in total, of which more than 88% were private institutions. This persistently large share of nonpublic education provision makes difficult the assurance of education quality in Haiti as nonpublic schools are very heterogeneous and they largely ignore government regulations and accreditation standards (Lunde 2010). In 2012, according to the ECVMAS survey, private education represents about 65% of primary and secondary school enrollment, one of the highest proportion of private school enrollment in the world.

In addition, between 2002 and 2011, total social expenditure, including education, in the country was reduced from 2.7 to 1.5% of GDP. Lamaute-Brisson (2013) reveals that the evolution of government education expenditure was erratic between 2002 (1.65% of GDP) and 2005 and then it collapsed in 2006 (0.57% of GDP) until 2011 (0.59% of GDP), when it picked up. This volatility is explained by the fragile political situation and the volatility of GDP growth itself.

3.2 The 2010 earthquake

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January 2010 was one of the four greatest killers recorded worldwide since 1990. Official figures place it as being twice as lethal as any previous earthquake of the same magnitude (Bilham 2010). Although recent surveys by international institutions suggest that the official death count is overestimated (Lundahl 2013; Schuller and Morales 2012), there is no question about the severity of its repercussions (Kolbe et al. 2010; Schwartz et al. 2011; Doocy et al. 2013). The death toll as recorded in EM-DAT (2015) is estimated at 222,600. Haiti is one of the most vulnerable developing countries when it comes to natural disasters and the most exposed country in the region (Heger et al. 2008; Briguglio 1995). It has been hit by just over 50 natural disasters since 1900. Another aspect, which might explain why Haiti is even more vulnerable than its neighbors Dominican Republic and Jamaica is the level of development and incomplete insurance markets that increase the impact of the shocks when they occur (Strobl 2012). The earthquake’s repercussions were much more dramatic here than in other countries hit by stronger earthquakes. The context surrounding the earthquake was particularly ill-fated in that Haiti had been victim to either a tropical storm or severe flooding every year of that entire decade. The international EM-DAT database shows that these disasters prior to the earthquake affected over one million people in total and were responsible for nearly 7,000 deaths (EM-DAT 2015). Other countries have been struck by similar or stronger earthquakes, but the repercussions were much more dramatic for Haiti (Cavallo et al. 2010). For instance, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 hit Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-largest city, in 2010 with no fatalities. Similarly, an 8.8 earthquake hit central Chile that same year causing 525 deaths. The same holds true for extreme weather events such as hurricane Ike (2008), which battered Cuba and Haiti causing seven fatalities in Cuba, but more than 100 times that number in Haiti (793 deaths) (Fig. 1).

The 2010 earthquake was largely unanticipated and smacked headlong into the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, home to over one in five Haitians, destroying public buildings and housing as it went. It constitutes a unique natural experiment setting for the study of households’ responses to this sort of shocks.

Material and human damage was huge in the area hit by the earthquake, but did not affect all the households in the same way. In Haiti, three times more makeshift dwellings than permanent buildings were destroyed in the hardest hit areas. Moreover, makeshift housing in the least-affected areas suffered greater damage than permanent buildings in the hardest hit areas (Herrera et al. 2014). The earthquake may well be a natural phenomenon, but its differentiated effect was also the result of massive social inequalities and vulnerabilities that magnified its effects among the most disadvantaged.

Despite the immediate response from the international community, with rescue teams and pledges of financial assistance and support for reconstruction and development, things are still far from being ideal. Six months after the earthquake, Échevin (2011) finds that the location of households emerges as the main criterion to explain the assistance allocation; the programs were not specifically targeted at people who need it the most, because of their low level of subsistence or losses due to the earthquake. Using ECVMAS, Herrera et al. (2014) corroborate these results. Institutional assistance largely overlooked the population outside the conurbation of Port-au-Prince, even though just over six in ten of the households hit were outside the capital. In fact, more earthquake victims were not living in camps than in them, in which a large proportion of the aid was concentrated. Most of the households had ceased receiving aid even though their situation had not improved. A full 80% of the population reported that aid had stopped more than 3 months before mid-2012. Reconstruction aid reached just 7% of the households that suffered extensive damage to their housing. Most of the rubble clearing work had been done by the people themselves, and some of the debris had still not been cleared. All in all, the aid provided by the institutions was short-term emergency aid, heavily oriented to the most directly and stronger hit areas, but not effective in targeting the most vulnerable people in these directly affected areas and even neglecting the indirectly affected ones (Herrera et al. 2014).

The Haitian education sector was one of the sectors most severely affected by the 2010 earthquake, suffering great losses in terms of both infrastructure and manpower (GTEF 2011). According to the Ministry of National Education and Professional Training (MENFP), 4268 education infrastructure (schools, training centers, and institutions of higher education) were destroyed or structurally affected and most all services were suspended until April of 2010. The Economic and Social Assistance Fund of Haiti (FAES) was in charge of light infrastructure implementation to facilitate the return to school. As we mentioned above for international assistance, in the absence of recent data, the education programs’ focus (e.g., UNICEF’s emergency assistance for education services, Ti Manman Cheri, a conditional transfers program for school retention) was mainly geographical and most of the time favored the Metropolitan area (Lamaute-Brisson 2013). Beyond the response to the emergency situation, the principle of universal access to primary education was reiterated in the operational plan for founding the Haitian education system (2010–2015).¹⁰ This recommendation finds its translation in the Programme of Free and Compulsory Universal Schooling (PSUGO)—also called Lekòl Timoun yo—released in 2011. PSUGO aims to increase and sustain demand for education with immediate effects, while the change in quality is slower. During the first year, the achievement was mainly in two departments, West (including the Metropolitan area) and Artibonite. According to MENFP, between 2010 and 2013, 288 schools were built (or rebuilt), 108 in the West department. The formation and recruitment of well-qualified teachers is still a challenge in itself despite the efforts that have been initiated (4123 teachers were recruited in 2012–2013; the target is 8000 at the end of the PSUGO program).