 Trade liberalization and child laborLiqiu Zhao, Fei Wang and Zhong Zhao China Economic Review, 2021, vol. 65, issue C Abstract: This paper exploits a quasi-natural experiment – the U.S. granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China after China's accession to the World Trade Organization – to examine whether trade liberalization affects the incidence of child labor. PNTR permanently set U.S. duties on Chinese imports at low Normal Trade Relations (NTR) levels and removed the uncertainty associated with annual renewals of China's NTR status. We find that the PNTR was significantly associated with the rising incidence of child labor in China. A one percentage point reduction in expected export tariffs raises the odds of child labor by a 1.2 percentage point. The effects are greater for girls, older children, rural children, and children with less-educated parents. The effect of trade liberalization on the incidence of child labor, however, tends to weaken in the long run, probably because trade liberalization can induce exporters to upgrade technology and thus have less demand for unskilled workers. Keywords: Child labor; Trade liberalization; Trade policy uncertainty; Difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:65:y:2021:i:c:s1043951x20301723 DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2020.101575 Access Statistics for this article China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier |
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