Cash transfers and child labor

Jacobus de Hoop and Furio Rosati

No 6826, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Cash transfer programs are widely used in settings where child labor is prevalent. Although many of these programs are explicitly implemented to improve children's welfare, in theory their impact on child labor is undetermined. This paper systematically reviews the empirical evidence on the impact of cash transfers, conditional and unconditional, on child labor. The authors find no evidence that cash transfer interventions increase child labor in practice. On the contrary, there is broad evidence that conditional and unconditional cash transfers lower both children's participation in child labor and hours worked and cushion the effect of economic shocks that may lead households to use child labor as a coping strategy. Boys experience particularly strong decreases in economic activities, girls in household chores. The findings underline the usefulness of cash transfers as a relatively safe policy instrument to improve child welfare, but also point to knowledge gaps, for instance regarding the interplay between cash transfers and other interventions, that should be addressed in future evaluations to provide detailed policy advice.

Keywords: Street Children; Labor Policies; Youth and Governance; Children and Youth; Debt Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ger
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS6826.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Cash Transfers and Child Labor (2014)
Working Paper: Cash Transfers and Child Labour (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6826

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi (ryazigi@worldbank.org).