Does Child Work Decrease with Parental Income?: The Luxury Axiom Revisited in India

Uma Kambhampati

No em-dp2004-02, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse the determinants of child work and schooling in rural India within a bivariate probit framework. Our sample consists of 93,825 children (6-15 year olds) from the 50th Round of the NSS in India. Our primary focu8s is whether an increase in the wages earned by fathers and mothers in our sample would help decrease the work done by children. Two results stand out from our analysis. First, we can confirm the luxury axiom in India - and increase in mother's and father's wages does decrease child work. The effect is neither continuous nor monotonic in the case of mother's wages, however. In fact, we find that mother's work actually increases the probability of child (especially girls) work, though this effect is mitigated by an increase in mother's wages. Second, mother's education (rather than employment or wates0 is the single most significant factor decreasing the probability of children working.

Keywords: Child labour; schooling; income; wages; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2004-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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