Is Child Work Necessary?*

Sonia Bhalotra

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2007, vol. 69, issue 1, 29-55

Abstract: This article investigates the hypothesis that child labour is compelled by poverty. It shows that a testable implication of this hypothesis is that the wage elasticity of child labour supply is negative. Using a large household survey for rural Pakistan, labour supply models for boys and girls in wage work are estimated. Conditioning on non‐labour income and a range of demographic variables, the article finds a negative wage elasticity for boys and an elasticity that is insignificantly different from zero for girls. Thus, while boys appear to work on account of poverty compulsions, the evidence for girls is ambiguous.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0084.2006.00435.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Is Child Work Necessary? (2003)
Working Paper: Is Child Work Necessary? (2000)
Working Paper: Is Child Work Necessary? (2000)
Working Paper: Is child work necessary? (2000)
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:bla:obuest:v:69:y:2007:i:1:p:29-55

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0305-9049

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Christopher Adam, Anindya Banerjee, Christopher Bowdler, David Hendry, Adriaan Kalwij, John Knight and Jonathan Temple

More articles in Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics from Department of Economics, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().