This study uses a nationally representative survey to analyze a key survey design decision in child labor measurement: self-reporting versus proxy interviewing. The child/proxy disagreement affects 20 percent of the sample, which translates into a 17.1 percentage point difference in the national...

We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and...

Do the short and medium term adjustment costs associated with trade liberalization influence schooling and child labor decisions? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991 tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schooling and decline in...

Why do young children migrate without a parent? We consider the economic components of the answer to this question by examining the correlates of out-migration for children under 15 whose mother's reside in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India. 1 million children appear to have migrated away from home...

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....

We present a general model of child labor that incorporates the various components presented in the literature as explanations for its existence. Our proposal is to mitigate the phenomenon by encouraging temporary emigration. It emerges that the remittances sent by the emigrating parents might...

Using the first two waves of the Vietnam Living Standards Survey, we investigate how a father's temporary absence affects children left behind in terms of their school attendance, household expenditures on education, and nonhousework labor supply in the 1990s. The estimating subsample is...

We examine the effects of trade liberalization on child work in Indonesia. Our estimation strategy identifies geographical differences in the effects of trade policy through district level exposure to reduction in import tariff barriers. We use a balanced panel of 261 districts, based on four...

Coca eradication and interdiction are the most common policies aimed at reducing the production and distribution of cocaine in the Andes, but little is known about their impact on households. This paper uses the shift in the production of coca leaves from Peru to Colombia in 1995 to analyze the...