Rural poverty and early parental home-leaving in the Philippines

Clarinda R. Lusterio-Berja, University of the Philippines

Results a recent nationwide youth survey in the Philippines show that 35& of adolescents left their parental home early to work. More than half of them left because they wanted to augment family income while more than 1/3 reported they needed to earn for education and personal needs. The mean age for leaving to work is 16.8 years. This study examines how poverty impinges on the trajectory of adolescent life course focusing on home-leaving and its specific routes such as schooling, working and marriage using data from the 2002 YAFS3 Survey. Results of the Cox hazard regression model show that females, living in rural areas, who belong to a poor family, not raised by both parents, left school earlier and worked at a younger age are more likely to leave their parental home early. These implies the importance of economic and family variables in explaining early home leaving.