This note demonstrates that when developing countries remove barriers to migration and integrate their labour markets, children may be driven out of schools and into informal or paid employment in the comparatively rich countries. In industrialized countries, the same mechanism might force...

When labor incomes approach subsistence levels, the labor supply curve slopes outward, because the fight for survival mandates households to look for longer work hours in response to falling wage rates. We explore conditions under which near-subsistence scenarios may imply wage traps, labor...