Child Labor and the Education of a Society

Clive Bell and Hans Gersbach

No 338, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine economic growth, inequality and education when the wellspring of growth is the formation of human capital through a combination of the quality of child-rearing and formal schooling. The existence of multiple steady states is established, including a poverty trap, wherein children work full-time and no human capital accumulation takes place, with continuous growth at an asymptotically steady rate as an alternative. We show that a society can escape from the poverty trap into a condition of continuous growth through a program of taxes and transfers. Temporary inequality is a necessary condition to escape in finite time, but long-run inequalities are avoidable provided sufficiently heavy, but temporary taxes can be imposed on the better-off. Programs aiming simply at high attendance rates in the present can be strongly non-optimal.

Keywords: growth and inequality; education; human capital; Child labor; redistributive policies; poverty traps (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H2 I2 O1 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2001-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published - published in: Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2009, 12 (2), 220-249.

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Related works:
Journal Article: CHILD LABOR AND THE EDUCATION OF A SOCIETY (2009)
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