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Abstract
This paper investigates children’s time allocation to schooling, home production, and market production
using a unique data set collected from northern Mali. Production shocks from harvest period pest
infestations induce households to withdraw children from school and increase the probability that they are
selected into farm work. Health shocks to women increases the probability that a child participates in the
family business and childcare activities. These results are robust to varying assumptions about the
structure of unobserved heterogeneity at the household and village levels. Different measures of
household assets are also constructed to test whether assets serve as a buffer against increased child labor
in response to shocks. Assets such as livestock have mixed effects on child labor and schooling,
depending on the shock and asset type. However, household durables are substitutes for increased child
labor when households face health shocks.