The inter-generational persistence of child labor

Patrick Emerson () and André Souza

No 32746, Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes from The World Bank

Abstract: The authors use the"Pesquisa Nacional por Amostragem a Domicilio"(PNAD) data for Brazil. Their paper asks two related questions. First, does the child labor status of parents impact the child labor incidence of their children? The authors find strong evidence that it does. Second, is this link only a function of permanent family income or is there a direct link between the child labor status of the parents, and their children? They find evidence that such a direct link exists. This complements their previous research (Emerson and Souza 2002) in which they went on to ask if a person works as a child, would this increase the probability of his, or her child working by more than what can be explained, by the fact that the person will be poor as an adult (by virtue of having been a child worker), and therefore compelled to send the child to work? The answer to this is also yes. Hence, the presence of social factors can cause the perpetuation of child labor through non-income channels. It is, for instance, possible that having been a child laborer oneself, affects one's social norms, and attitude to child labor (Basu 1999, Lopez-Calva 2002), such that one is more prone to send ones'own child to work.

Date: 2005-05-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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