Like mother like daughter? Occupational mobility among children under asset transfer program in Bangladesh

Using longitudinal data from Randomized Controlled Trials, this study estimates the effect of BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra-Poor program on the nature of work among the children of the program beneficiaries. Since the program provides assets to the main female of the household, this transfer is expected to alter their children’s study time, market and non-market activities. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that the likelihood of a child adopting self-employment increases significantly across all waves as a result of asset transfer. However, there is significant temporal and gender differences in the effects on their study time: the effect is negative in the short run but positive in the long run for the boys, but not significantly so for the girls. Our findings corroborate the Beckerian model of time allocation: in the short run asset transfer expands the earning opportunities inducing substitution of study time for work, especially among the boys. Eventually as income rises over time, demand for education rises study time. Our results also show that the asset transfer program is likely to reduce gender gap in skilled employment as girls become less likely to undertake unskilled work both relative to the boys in her household and all children in the non-participating households. The children of program participant households who were involved in unskilled work at the start of the program are likely to spend significantly more time on agricultural self-employment and less time on unskilled work uniformly across time.