Child Labor and Fertility

Ramona Schrepler
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Ramona Schrepler: South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ramona Bruhns ()

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Abstract: This essay analyzes the economic causes and effects of household decisions concerning fertility, education and child labor when children can supplement family income early in life and must support their parents in old age as adults. Parents, who raise and educate children for both financial and altruistic reasons, will typically choose a too little schooling for the economy to grow when all are poor. High child- raising costs or an educational process which is not sufficiently productive are the main reasons for the existence of a poverty trap with a high population growth rate and little or no schooling. Interventions such as taxes and subsidies can lead to sustained long-term economic growth, with fulltime schooling and a low population growth rate, even without outside aid, if the child-raising costs are not too high and the educational process is at least moderately productive.

Keywords: Child Labor; Fertility; Growth; OLG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2003-10-23, Revised 2004-02-26
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on WinXP; to print on A4 paper; pages: 42; figures: 6
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwphe:0310001

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