Influence of Environmental Shocks and Child Labour on Children's Educational Outcomes: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Educational outcomes for children are of the utmost importance since they form the foundation of education systems worldwide. Children's learning outcomes have been adversely affected by natural and human disasters since their inception. This paper employs a scoping review approach to investigate the influence of environmental shocks and child labour on children's educational outcomes. Numerous empirical studies have been screened in this study to determine how environmental shocks and child labour influence children's educational outcomes. This present study is the most recent research to examine the influence of environmental shocks and child labour on children's educational outcomes. This study found that environmental shocks (death, climate variability, flooding, and hurricanes) are positively associated with child labour and negatively related to children's learning outcomes, while child labour (farming, domestic chores, fishing, and hawking) has a negative influence on children's educational outcomes. This study also found that the interaction effect of environmental shocks and child labour has detrimental impacts on children's learning outcomes. Available literature has shown that research on the influence of environmental shocks and child labour on children's education and environmental shocks on child labour is still growing. More studies are needed on the influence of other kinds of environmental shocks and child labour on children's educational outcomes as well as the influence of environmental shocks on child labour, particularly on the African continent. This is because there is a dearth of literature despite the fact that they are susceptible to environmental shocks since they are located in the tropics and other areas habitually unprotected from life-threatening weather events, which reduce their per capita income and increase child labour.