Remittances, Child Labor, and Schooling: Evidence from Colombia

Andres Cuadros-Menaca and Arya Gaduh

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2020, vol. 68, issue 4, 1257 - 1293

Abstract: We estimate the causal impact of remittances on child labor and school participation in Colombia using data from its main metropolitan areas. We develop an instrumental variable strategy that leverages the unemployment shocks induced by the 2008 financial crisis in Colombian migrants’ main destination countries. We find that remittances reduce child labor but not schooling. Relative to their mean participation shares, these impacts are larger for younger children and girls. However, the reduction in child labor among girls is associated with a large increase in participation in household work. Finally, we also find that even though remittances reduce the labor supply of female adults, their percent-change impact on adults is smaller than that on children.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/702790 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/702790 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/702790

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().