The Demand for Gratitude as a Restraint on the Use of Child Labor: A Hypothesis

Oded Stark and Wiktor Budzinski

No 15050, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study a parent's demand for gratitude from his child. We view this demand as an intervening variable between the parent's earnings and the incidence of child labor. The demand for gratitude arises from the desire of a parent to receive care and support from his child late in life, while the inclination of the child to provide this support during his adulthood is determined by how the child was treated by his parent during childhood. Specifically, we model the child's gratitude as an inverse function of the intensity of his labor in childhood. We show that when we keep the child's (imputed) wage constant, the intensity of child labor decreases with the parent's earnings. However, when we make the child's (imputed) wage a function of the parent's earnings, then the outcome can be different. With the help of a numerical example, we show that the pattern of child labor related to the parent's earnings can be U-shaped.

Keywords: child labor; the parent’s demand for care and support late in life; gratitude formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D13 D15 D64 J13 J22 O12 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2022-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, 2023, 89 (1), 137-147

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Related works:
Journal Article: The demand for gratitude as a restraint on the use of child labor: A hypothesis (2023)
Journal Article: The demand for gratitude as a restraint on the use of child labor: A hypothesis (2023)
Working Paper: The demand for gratitude as a restraint on the use of child labor: A hypothesis (2022)
Working Paper: The demand for gratitude as a restraint on the use of child labor: A hypothesis (2021)
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