This paper exploits a natural experiment approach to identify the impact of legislation (Employment of Children Act 1991) in Pakistan on participation of children in the labor markets. The law prohibits employment of children less than 14 years of age in sectors other than agriculture or...

This paper aims to identify the major drop-out and push-out factors that lead to school abandonment in an urban surrounding-the shantytowns of Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil. The authors use an extensive survey addressing risk factors faced by the population in these neighborhoods, which cover both...

The impact of macroeconomic crises on parents' investments in the human capital of their children is a widely contested issue. The author analyzes the effects of the profound macroeconomic crisis in Peru in 1988-92 on the schooling and employment decisions made by urban school-age children. He...

This paper exploits a unique longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the consequences of child labor on education, employment choices, and marital status over a 10-year horizon. Shocks to crop production and rainfall are used as instrumental variables for child labor. For boys, the...

This paper investigates the relationship of household income with child labor. The analysis uses a rich dataset obtained in the context of a conditional cash transfer program in a poor region of Nicaragua in 2005 and 2006. The program has a strong productive emphasis and seeks to diversify the...

The authors introduce a simple empirical model that assumes a positive stigma (or norm) toward child labor that is common in some developing countries. They illustrate the positive stigma model using data from Guatemala. Controlling for several child and household-level characteristics, the...

Does child labor decrease as household income rises? This question has important implications for the design of policy on child labor. This paper focuses on a program of unconditional cash transfers in Ecuador. It argues that the effect of a small increase in household income on child labor...

The aim of this study is two-fold. First, based on summary data at the country-level for an unusually large set of developing countries originally obtained from household sample surveys conducted between 1993 and 2003, the authors construct a detailed profile of child economic activity and child...

The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great policy importance. An attendant question is whether program effects are larger when transfers are "conditioned" on certain behaviors, such as a requirement that households enroll their children in...

Inequalities in access to education pose a significant barrier to development. It has been argued that this reflects, in part, borrowing constraints that inhibit private investment in human capital by the poor. One promise of the recent proposals to open international labor markets to allow for...