There is no empirical evidence that trade exposure per se increases child labour. As trade theory and household economics lead us to expect, the cross-country evidence seems to indicate that trade reduces or, at worst, has no significant effect on child labour. Consistently with the theory, a...

Higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production, particularly in the developing world. We introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age. Using data on test scores and schooling from rural India, we show that...

Could a partial subsidy for child education increase children's participation in paid work? In contrast to much of the theoretical and empirical child labor literature, this paper shows that child work and school participation can be complements under certain conditions. Using data from the...

We examine the effects of a compulsory schooling reform on child labor in Turkey, which extended the duration of schooling from 5 to 8 years while substantially improving the schooling infrastructure. We employ four rounds of Child Labor Surveys with a very rich set of outcomes. The reform...

This paper investigates the effect of a unique child labor ban regulation on employment and school enrollment. The ban implemented in Mexico in 2015, increased the minimum working age from 14 to 15, introduced restrictions to employ underage individuals, and imposed penalties for the violation...

Using data from BRIGHT, an integrated program that aims to improve school participation in rural communities in Burkina Faso, we investigate the impact of school subsidies and increased access to education on child work. Regression discontinuity estimates demonstrate that, while BRIGHT...

Lack of adequate childcare is a main reason women cite for not participating in the labor force. We investigate the effect of a reform that lengthened school schedules from half to full days in Chile – essentially providing zero-cost childcare – on different maternal labor participation...

We analyze the impact of an increase in compulsory schooling policy on the gender gap in intergenerational educational persistence using the Turkish Adult Education Survey (2012). Prior to the reform there is a gender gap in the association of parents' educational attainment with their...

A growing literature documents the positive long-term effects of policy-induced improvements in early-life health and nutrition. However, there is still scarce evidence on early-life health programs targeting a large share of the population and the role of such programs in increasing...

Extant research on school entry and compulsory schooling laws finds that these policies increase the high school graduation rate of relatively younger students, but weaken their academic performance in early grades. In this paper, we explore the evolution of postsecondary impacts of the...