National poverty strategies frequently overlook important elements of children's experiences of poverty, including trafficking, sexual exploitation and access to information about how to avoid HIV/AIDS. Non-immediate impacts of broader economic development policies on children's well-being often remain largely invisible. This paper primarily investigates factors relating to child labour and child schooling in order to understand the possible impact of policies on households and children.

One of the main objectives of the Ethiopian Poverty Reduction Strategy (2002-05) was to expand primary school enrolment and provide more equitable and higher quality education. However, only the access-related targets set out in the Education Sector Development Plans I (1996-2001) and II (2002-05), have been achieved. The quality of primary education has mostly declined, with marked shortages of qualified primary school teachers and textbooks, and increasing class sizes and dropout rates.

This paper investigates the link between micro-level outcomes and macro-level policy initiatives for a sample of 8-year-old children in Ethiopia. It uses school enrolment data from a 2002 survey of 1,000 rural and urban households from food insecure communities. This study investigated external factors associated with children's enrolment in school, such as lack of income, labour, economic shocks, social capital and education of adults in the household.