Abstract: Using data from the 2010 Survey of Activities of Young People (SAYP) this paper examines the relationship between parent absenteeism and adolescents’ (10-17 years old) participation in the labour force in South Africa. Due to widespread poverty and the impact of HIV/AIDS, adolescents are forced to forego schooling to seek employment. As Stanton et al. (2004) posited, parent absenteeism affects adolescents’ schoo! comple- tion rates and is associated with risky behaviour. This paper argues that parent absenteeism also forces ado- lescents to seek employment. Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression are used. Results show that 1.58 adolescents per 1,000 adolescent population work 10 or more hours a week. Further, 38.7% of adolescents have at least one parent absent from the household. Almost 2% of adolescents who have at least one parent absent are not enrolled in school. Finally, adolescents are less likely to work more than 10 hours a week if a mother is absent from the household (0.34), yet more likely to work more than 10 hours if a father is absent (1.21).
Keywords: Adolescents; absent parents; employment; logistic regression; Survey of Activities of Young People; odds ratios