On the Distributional Consequences of Child Labor Legislation

Dirk Krueger () and Jessica Tjornhom Donohue

No 10347, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper we construct a dynamic heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model to quantify the effects of child labor legislation on human capital accumulation and the distribution of wealth and welfare. Crucial model elements include a human capital externality in the market sector, an informal home production sector in which child labor laws cannot be enforced, uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk, borrowing constraints, and endogenous wage and interest rate determination in general equilibrium. We calibrate the model to US data around 1880 and find that the welfare consequences for individual households of a transition to policies that restrict child labor or provide tax-financed free education depend crucially on the main source of a households' income. Whereas households with significant financial asset holdings unambiguously lose from any government intervention, high-wage workers benefit most from a ban on child labor, while low-wage workers benefit most from free education. Based on a utilitarian social welfare function, the introduction of free education results in substantial welfare gains, in the order of 3% of consumption, mainly because it leads to higher human capital accumulation. A child labor ban, in contrast, induces (small) welfare losses because it reduces income opportunities for poor families without being effective in stimulating education attainment.

JEL-codes: I28 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-edu
Date: 2004-03
Note: EFG LS CH
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10347.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: On The Distributional Consequences Of Child Labor Legislation (2007)
Journal Article: ON THE DISTRIBUTIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION (2005)
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:nbr:nberwo:10347

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10347
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().