Private sustainability standards and child schooling in the African coffee sector

Abstract Private sustainability standards are spreading rapidly in global value chains, especially in the coffee sector, and commonly aim at promoting environmental, economic and social sustainability. The social sustainability component is often overlooked in studies on the impact of private standards. In this paper, we investigate a particular social outcome and analyse how adoption of private sustainability standards affects the welfare of children in coffee-producing farm-households in Ethiopia and Uganda. We specifically analyse school enrolment and schooling efficiency of primary and secondary school-aged children. We find that participation in Fairtrade certification schemes increases the likelihood of children to be enrolled in secondary school and improves their schooling efficiency, although it is not associated with higher incomes nor with a reduced child labour time in the farm-household. We find that participation in Rainforest Alliance certification schemes has no effect on schooling outcomes of boys and slightly reduces the schooling of girls, while it does correlate with higher incomes and a reduced workload of children. Results suggest that effects on schooling emerge through social capital and awareness-raising about the importance of schooling among Fairtrade certified households, rather than from the mere prohibition of child labour and the enforcement of a child-labour-free production process.