The link between household poverty and child labor is much stronger in Pakistan than in Peru. Providing good schools in South Asia could help reduce child labor. The link between child labor and adult labor markets varies with gender. Using data from Peruvian and Pakistani household surveys, Ray...

This paper analyses child labour participation and its key determinants using data sets from Peru and Pakistan. The results include tests of the `Luxury' and `Substitution' hypotheses that play key roles in recent studies on child labour and child schooling. The results reject both hypotheses in...

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to understand better the determinants of child labour and schooling in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses data from a survey based in rural Bangladesh and considers the children aged 5-17 years living in rural households in...

I explore the link between openness to trade, investments in human capital and technology, credit market constraints, and child labor in a panel of 101 countries from 1980 to 2004. In a cross-country setting, Neumayer and De Soysa (2005) and Edmonds and Pavcnik (2006) find that countries that...

We develop a model of exploitative child labor with two key features: first, parents have imperfect information about whether employment opportunities available to their children are exploitative or not. Second, firms choose whether or not to exploit their child workers. In our model, a ban on...

Possession of land is often associated with higher levels of child labour. This paper will look closer at the “wealth paradox†by testing in rural Mali the relationship between landownership and one of the hidden forms of child labour, namely family-based work. We also experiment a...

In developing countries, the opportunity costs of children's time may significantly hinder universal education. This paper studies one of these opportunity costs: we estimate the agricultural productivity of children aged 10 to 15, with the LSMS-ISA panel survey in Tanzania. Since child labor...

Building upon the social-risk management approach, this paper examines dimensions of household behavior that are important for risk management and reduction of vulnerability, beyond issues of consumption. This paper attempts to assess to what extent risk and vulnerability factors are relevant...

How much work is ‘‘too much’’ for children aged 10-14 in Egypt? Our narrow focus here is on ‘‘work that does not interfere with school attendance.’’ For girls, work includes time spent in household chores and subsistence activities. We estimate simultaneous hours of work and...

Uneven success of poverty-based approaches calls for a re-think of the causes behind persistent child labour in many developing societies. We develop a theoretical model to highlight the role of income inequality as a channel of persistence. The interplay between income inequality and...