EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Economics of Child Labor

Kaushik Basu and Van Pham

American Economic Review, 1998, vol. 88, issue 3, 412-27

Abstract: If child labor as a mass phenomenon occurs not because of parental selfishness but because of the parents' concern for the household's survival, the popular argument for banning child labor loses much of its force. However, this assumption about parental decision making, coupled with the assumption of substitutability in production between child and adult labor, could result in multiple equilibria in the labor market, with one equilibrium where children work and another where adult wage is high and children do not work. The paper establishes this result and discusses its policy implications. Copyright 1998 by American Economic Association.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (558)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:aea:aecrev:v:88:y:1998:i:3:p:412-27

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:88:y:1998:i:3:p:412-27