Summary of Findings from the Child Labor Surveys in the Cocoa Sector of West Africa

International Child Labor Program - Bureau of International Affairs (ILAB)ChildLaborCocoaFindings.pdf: 1028 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Advancing the Campaign Against Child Labor Volume II: Addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor

International Child Labor Program - Bureau of International Labor Affairs(ILAB)ChildLaborAdvancingCampaign2.pdf: 1448 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Child Labor

In recent years, there has been an astonishing proliferation of empirical work on child labor. An Econlit search of keywords "child lab*r" reveals a total of 6 peer reviewed journal articles between 1980 and 1990, 65 between 1990 and 2000, and 143 in the first five years of the present decade. The purpose of this essay is to provide a detailed overview of the state of the recent empirical literature on why and how children work as well as the consequences of that work. Section 1 defines terms commonly used in the study of child time allocation and provides a descriptive overview of how children spend their time in low income countries today. Section 2 reviews the case for attention to the most common types of work in which children participate, focusing on that work's impact on schooling, health, as well as externalities associated with that work. Section 3 considers the literature on the determinants of child time allocation such as the influence of local labor markets, family interactions, the net return to schooling, and poverty. Section 5 discusses the limited evidence on different policy options aimed at influencing child labor. Section 6 concludes by emphasizing important research questions requiring additional research such as child and parental agency, the effectiveness of child labor policies, and the determinants of participation in the "worst forms" of child labor.

Child labor and household wealth: Theory and empirical evidence of an inverted-U

Some studies on child labor have shown that greater land wealth leads to higher child labor, thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty. This paper argues that the missing ingredient is an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which suggests an inverted-U relationship between land holdings and child labor. A unique data set from India that has child labor hours information confirms this hypothesis. It is shown that the turning point beyond which more land leads to a decline in child labor occurs at 3.6 acres of land per household, which is well below the observed maximum value of and-holding.child labor, land-holding, education, labor markets

A Theory of Exploitative Child Labor

Child labor laws should aim to protect children who work, instead of trying to remove children from work. In this paper, we identify an instance when the risk of exploitation lowers the expected bene…t of child labor to the child,and therefore suppresses child labor force participation. Targeted legal intervention that lowers or removes the risk of exploitation raises child participation in the labor market, child welfare, and overall societal welfare. Targeting on child labor more broadly may reduce child labor force participation, child welfare, and overall societal welfare. Our key assumptions for generating these results are that parents decide for each child based on their child's best interest, that parents face imperfect information about the risks their children confront upon entering the labor market, and that firms may choose to exploit this information imperfection by employing children under forced-labor-type conditions.child labor, exploitation

Broken Hearts: A Review of Industry Efforts to Eliminate Child Labor in the Cocoa Industry

Report by the International Labor Rights Forum analyzing the chocolate industry’s initiatives to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in West Africa’s cocoa sector. Shows how chocolate companies have continued to control these initiatives and, as a result, have allowed child labor to continue

Do market wages influence child labor and child schooling?

Thispaper provides empirical evidence on the joint determinants of child labor, and child schooling, using individual level data from Egypt. The main findings are as follows: 1) A ten percent increase in the illiterate male market wage decreases the probability of child labor by 21.5 percent for boys, and 13.1 percent for girls. 2) Higher local regional income inequality increases the likelihood of child labor. 3) Parents who were child laborers themselves, are more likely to send their children out to work. 4) Local labor market conditions - the share of adults engaged in the public sector, or in non-regular jobs - play an important role in influencing child labor participation. 5) There is a trade-off between child labor, and child schooling. The results suggest that not only is poverty the main cause of child labor, but that child labor perpetuates poverty as well.Street Children,Youth and Governance,Children and Youth,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Standards

Explaining Variation in Child Labor Statistics

Child labor statistics are critical for assessing the extent and nature of child labor activities in developing countries. In practice, widespread variation exists in how child labor is measured. Questionnaire modules vary across countries and within countries over time along several dimensions, including respondent type and the structure of the questionnaire. Little is known about the effect of these differences on child labor statistics. This paper presents the results from a randomized survey experiment in Tanzania focusing on two survey aspects: different questionnaire design to classify children work and proxy response versus self-reporting. Use of a short module compared with a more detailed questionnaire has a statistically significant effect, especially on child labor force participation rates, and, to a lesser extent, on working hours. Proxy reports do not differ significantly from a child’s self-report. Further analysis demonstrates that survey design choices affect the coefficient estimates of some determinants of child labor in a child labor supply equation. The results suggest that low-cost changes to questionnaire design to clarify the concept of work for respondents can improve the data collected.child labor, survey design, Tanzania

Inequality, Productivity, and Child Labor: Theory and Evidence

A recent theoretical literature has linked reductions in income inequality to reductions in child labor in countries that are relatively well-off, but has not explored how income distribution affects child labor in very poor countries. We show that while in higher-productivity countries with child labor, a more equal income distribution will reduce or eliminate child labor, in low productivity countries, a more equal distribution of income will exacerbate child labor. Econometric specifications studying child labor among 10- to-14 year olds yield results generally consistent with these predictions. Policy actions that aim to bring about more equality so as to reduce child labor will likely not have the desired effect unless a country in which they are taken is sufficiently wealthy.

Endogenous Technical Progress and the Emergence of Child Labor Laws

I develop a theory of technical progress that uncovers sufficient conditions for opposition to the adoption of child labor laws to disappear over time. The supply of child labor comes exclusively from unskilled parents, because of their inability to help their children benefit from formal education, while its demand originates from capitalists-the firms' owners. Because child labor crowds out adult employment, there are always social pressures to ban it. However, such pressures are met by capitalists' opposition. Capitalist oppose the adoption of a ban on child labor because such a ban reduces opportunities for earning a high return on capital. Technical progress, induced by skill accumulation, improves the earning prospects of firms hiring adult workers only, while it reduces those of firms hiring children only. As a result, more capitalists are drawn into the adult labor market, and industrial opposition to a ban on child labor eventually vanishes over time. Provided child labor exhibits skill-enhancing learning-by-doing, policy action to speed up the emergence of child labor laws should therefore focus on education reforms that raise the quality of education school-goers receive, and on political reforms that raise the cost of lobbying legislators against adopting a ban on child labor. However, in countries where child labor provides little or no opportunities for learning-by-doing, no law will emerge unless appropriately targeted poverty alleviation mechanisms are designed, in order to induce unskilled parents to allocate a positive fraction of child's time to schooling.Child labor, Learning-by-doing, Education, Technical progress, Lobbying cost, Voting equilibrium