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

By Kaushik Basu, Sanghamitra Das, Bhaskar Dutta. Social Science Research Network, 2007

254 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some studies on child labor have shown that 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 is an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which suggests an inverted-U relationship between land holdings and child labor. A unique data set from India that has child labor hours information confirms this hypothesis. It is shown that the turning point beyond which more land leads to a decline in child labor occurs at 3.6 acres of land per household, which is well below the observed maximum value of land-holding.

Subfields: Nutrition and Dietetics, Safety Research, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff156f6e07d6bcd1f41d78c49f1f21b821425fa2

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In Nutrition and Dietetics

In Safety Research

In Soil Science

Citations in the corpus

Poverty Alleviation and Child Labor (2008, background): “At follow-up, the mode and median hours worked for a child under 17 in paid employment is 40 hours per week.”
Hidden child labour : determinants of housework and family business work of children in 16 developing countries (2012, background): “From then on, children’s engagement may decline (Basu et al., 2007).”