Participation in work and school are often assumed to be mutually exclusive. Thus, economists commonly present children's work and study patterns as a competition over time. In this paper, it is not the time involved, but the characteristics of the activity that appear to influence complementary or competitive relationship between work and school.

Ethiopia has a fragmented ethno-linguistic landscape and education policy in recent decades has attempted to enforce the language rights of students.  This paper seeks to answer if a child's linguistic identity is a significantly associated with where they sit in the classroom in Ethiopia? Classroom seating placement is an important component of the learning experience as it refers to the child's proximity to the teacher, blackboard, and centre of learning.

There are long-standing debates about how to measure poverty and well-being and how to classify household and individuals in terms of poverty status. This paper informs those debates. It presents a taxonomy of poverty and vulnerability that has been developed from a mixed methods study of rural children and households in Ethiopia. Qualitative information is used to inform and development of quantitative indicators that will assess poverty and vulnerability.

Economists study many aspects of children's lives. They have been criticised by childhood studies researchers for failing to recognise children as agents, despite evidence that children act, within social constraints, to achieve outcomes they prefer. Childhood studies researchers also argue that economists neglect to use methods which capture children's perspectives on their lives, although evidence shows adult caregivers often describe children's views or behaviours inaccurately. Economists largely ignore such criticisms.

This article presents a case study of a rapidly evolving urban community in Southern Ethiopia drawing on survey and qualitative data from Young Lives, a long-term international study of two cohorts of children growing up in poverty (born 1994-1995 and 2000-2001). It uses this to set visible changes in aspirations and experiences of schooling over time in their political and economic context.