A history of child labour in Portugal

Pedro Goulart () and Arjun S. Bedi

No 448, Working Papers - General Series from Institute of Social Studies

Abstract: This paper uses historical and current data covering the period 1850 to 2001 to provide a history of child labour in Portugal. The Portuguese experience is set against the backdrop of the country’s changing economic structure, changes in education and minimum working age policies and the changing norms espoused by its people. The paper highlights the rapid post-1986 decline in child labour which is interpreted in terms of the cascading effect of policies that operated synchronously. Our assessment of the Portuguese experience suggests that while legal measures such as minimum working age requirements and compulsory schooling laws do help reduce child labour, no single legislation or policy is likely to be effective unless the various pieces come together. The use of children in the labour market appears to be driven mainly by the needs of the economic structure of the country, which in turn may be reflected in the norms and values espoused by its political leaders and their willingness to pass and implement legal measures.

Keywords: child labour; history; Portugal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-lab
Date: 2007
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://biblio.iss.nl/opac/uploads/wp/wp448.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iss:wpaper:448

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers - General Series from Institute of Social Studies
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Saskia Scheffer ().