Why do parents their children work ? A test of peverty hypothesis in rural areas in Brukina Faso

This article aims at testing whether child labor is caused by poverty. Tests are designed for rural areas in a setting characterized by the absence of a labor market. A model of rural household labor supply is developed that provides testable implications of two different poverty hypotheses. We test if child labor is due to a binding subsistence constraint and if child leisure is a luxury good. We find that, in rural Burkina Faso, children provide labor mostly because of labor market imperfections and not because of household subsistence needs and that child leisure is a normal good.