Feeding Program (a free school lunch scheme) that actually targets (i) poor, (ii) malnourished and (iii) out-of-school children especially in the North, none of which are currently targeting criteria, is also a necessary and viable policy approach to better incentivize school participation and mitigate harmful child labor. Overall, the social programs in the country that currently have the largest potential at the micro level to reduce child labor either have a limited scope (LEAP), are spatially blind (capitation grant), are very poorly—if not inversely—targeted (school feeding program) or suffer from a combination of these (for an in-depth analysis of these programs, see Krauss 2012). Thus, better targeting existing programs and safety nets to the North is needed so that child labor itself is not viewed as the safety net for some disadvantaged households. Yet such subsidies and safety nets are in general more likely to increase school participation than to reduce child labor.

In relation to the school-labor complementarities, universalizing basic school attendance would nonetheless likely also help decrease child labor and reducing child labor would likely also help universalize basic school attendance in the longer term – even though (as shown) many children are able to combine the two. This apparently interlocking relationship is not a ‘catch 22’ given some of the policies outlined here and given that public intervention in other countries has been able to simultaneously link large reductions in child labor to large increases in schooling, particularly through demand-side schemes like conditional cash transfers to households such as Bolsa Família in Brazil. An improved LEAP policy also has such a potential in Ghana.

In analyzing the country’s economic structure it is almost logical that the demand for child labor—particularly in the North—is high as the majority of households have agricultural livelihoods that require much manual labor and children are a cheap and flexible source of labor within the household. Further reducing the agricultural dependency of the economy and the share of households active in family farming in the longer term would also support in mitigating child labor, as only about 6% of all child laborers in the country are engaged in non-agricultural work. A structural shift of the economy away from family farming in the long run would need to be coupled with policy interventions that widen access at the secondary and tertiary education levels in rural and Northern areas and that help expand the formal job market outside of agriculture for graduates. Over time this would help raise the social value of and economic returns to education in rural areas and decrease the need for child laborers on the farm.<sup>36</sup> In terms of data collection, as household surveys can at times underestimate the prevalence of child labor (see Section 2), the Ghana Statistical Service should assess the feasibility of collecting a broader sample of data on street children by conducting an additional module for example in GLSS (or a separate, more specialised survey that only interviews child laborers) to gather data from non-household units.<sup>37</sup> This could help gain an even richer comprehension of the potential sources and consequences of the urban phenomenon and

> 36 In terms of the social value of education, Edmonds (2008) finds that, internationally, awareness and information campaigns are in general the most commonly adopted policy intervention aimed at reducing child labor. But sensitization seminars for parents (despite the importance of parental education and social norms in the analysis) are likely only to influence those parents who do not view child labor as an optimal choice due to reasons such as low returns to schooling.

> 37 Analysis on street children—and possibly child trafficking that is known to be practiced on Lake Volta—is an area that warrants further research in Ghana, although some preliminarily research has been conducted (see Kwankye _et al._ 2007).

22