Child Labor and Household Wealth: Theory and Empirical Evidence of an Inverted-U

Kaushik Basu, Sanghamitra Das and Bhaskar Dutta

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Some studies on child labor have shown that, at the level of the household, greater land wealth leads to higher child labor, thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty. This paper argues that the missing ingredient may be an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which suggests the possibility of an inverted-U relationship between land holdings and child labor. Using a unique data set that has child labor hours it is found that, controlling for child, household and village characteristics, the turning point beyond which more land leads to a decline in child labor occurs around 4 acres of land per household.

Keywords: child labor; land-holding; labor markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J20 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... s/2009/twerp_888.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Child labor and household wealth: Theory and empirical evidence of an inverted-U (2010)
Working Paper: Child Labor and Household Wealth: Theory and Empirical Evidence of an Inverted-U (2008)
Working Paper: Child labor and household wealth: Theory and empirical evidence of an inverted-U (2007)
Working Paper: Child Labor and Household Wealth: Theory and Empirical Evidence of an Inverted-U (2007)
Working Paper: Child Labor and Household Wealth: Theory and Empirical Evidence of an Inverted-U (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:888

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