Is Child Work Necessary?

Sonia Bhalotra

Bristol Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: This paper investigates the hypothesis that child labour is compelled by poverty or that the child's income contribution is needed by the household in order to meet subsistence expenditures. We show 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, we identify a negative wage elasticity for boys and an elasticity that is insignificantly different from zero for girls. Thus while the evidence is consistent with boys working on account of poverty compulsions, the evidence is ambiguous in the case of girls. The results are argued to be of interest to recent theoretical and policy developments in this area.

Keywords: child labour; education; poverty; gender; labour supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 J13 J22 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2003-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lab and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Is Child Work Necessary?* (2007)
Working Paper: Is child work necessary? (2001)
Working Paper: Is Child Work Necessary? (2000)
Working Paper: Is Child Work Necessary? (2000)
Working Paper: Is child work necessary? (2000)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bri:uobdis:03/554

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