Building Children’s Competencies for Educational Achievement Through Chores and Labor: A Longitudinal Study in Sierra Leone

This study investigates whether children’s work outside of school (manual work and domestic chores) positively impacts their educational outcomes, via the development of social and emotional resources. This challenges assumptions that child work is always detrimental to academic outcomes. The study is set in rural Sierra Leone and uses four waves of data from the Safe Learning Study (N = 3,118; female: 43%), a longitudinal intervention aimed at improving children’s literacy. Results indicate that chores have a positive effect on children’s perception of their own self-concept and engagement with education in each wave, while manual work has a positive effect on self-concept and engagement in some waves. Although there is no direct positive effect of child work on literacy attainment, an indirect effect exists via brilliance and engagement. The discussion suggests explanations for the lack of direct effects and implications of these findings for education policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.