Combining school with work presents challenges for children growing up in contexts of poverty. Drawing on evidence from three rounds of surveys and three rounds of qualitative research with case study children, we examine the complex relationship between school and work in the lives of children in Ethiopian communities studied by Young Lives.

This paper explores the effect of work on children's school achievement as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). Identifying the causal effects of child work on education is made difficult because the choice of work and/or school is made simultaneously and may be determined by the same potentially unobserved factors.Therefore, both ordinary least square and instrumental variable estimation methods were used to identify the effect of work on school achievement.