What Led to the Decline of Child Labour in the European Periphery? A Cointegration Approach with Long Historical Data

The “traditional view” on the historical decline of child labour has emphasised the role of the approval of effective child labour (minimum working age) laws. Since then, the importance of alternative key driving factors such as schooling, demography, household income or technology has been highlighted. While historically leading countries such as England and industrial labour have been studied, peripheral Europe and a full participation rate also including agriculture and services have received limited research attention. The contribution of this paper is to provide a first empirical explanation for the child labour decline observed in a European peripheral country like Portugal using long historical yearly data. For doing so, we use long series of Portugal’s child labour participation rate and several candidate explanatory factors. We implement cointegration techniques to relate child labour with its main drivers. We find that not only factors related to the “traditional view” were important for the Portuguese case. In fact, a mixture of legislation, schooling, demography, income, and technological factors seem to have contributed to the sustainable fall of Portugal’s child labour. Hence, explanations for observed child labour decline seem to differ by country and context, introducing a more nuanced view of the existing literature.</p

Globalization, Technology and Labour Resilience

Contains commentaries contextualising the essays presented and the economic changes seen since 1991 Provides a varied disciplinary approach, encompassing development studies, economics, and demographic studies Details the impact on and from migrations, technology and labour voice and resilienceinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Global Labour in Distress, Volume II: Earnings, (In)decent Work and Institutions

Contains commentaries contextualising the essays presented and the economic changes seen since 1991 Provides a varied disciplinary approach, encompassing development studies, economics, and demographic studies Details the impact on and from migrations, technology and labour voice and resilienceinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Workers and Labour Market Outcomes of Informal Jobs in Formal Establishments: A Job-Based Informality Index for Nine Sub-Saharan African Countries

How can an informal job in formal establishments be defined, who has an informal job and what are the labour market outcomes? This chapter uses data of comparable face-to-face surveys in nine countries: Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal and Togo. An index for job-based informality is developed, based on employment status and contribution and entitlement to social security. Young and low-educated workers are more likely to hold informal jobs; even more so are workers in small enterprises, in trade, transport and hospitality, and in unskilled occupations, while workers in skilled occupations and with high education are less likely to hold informal jobs. No evidence is found regarding gendered effects. The more informal, the poorer the labour market outcomes: wages are lower, while the chances are higher of being paid below the minimum wage, working more than 48 hours, and not being covered by a collective agreement