The literature suggests that the household invests in the human capital of a child member not only for altruistic reasons but also as insurance against future income shocks. Hence, the allocation of the child's time between school and work is a function of the risk preference of the household...

Basu and Van (1998) show that a ban on child labour may be self-enforcing under the extreme assumption that, above the subsistence level, no amount of consumption can compensate parents for the disutility of child labour. We show that a partial ban may be self-enforcing also in a more general...