Is child labor harmful? the impact of working as a child on adult earnings

This paper explores the question: is working as young laborer harmful to an individual in terms of adult outcomes in income? This question is explored through the utilization of a unique set of instruments that control for the decision to work as a child and the decision of how much schooling to acquire. These instruments are combined with two large household survey data sets from Brazil that include retrospective information on the child labor and schooling of working-age adults: the 1988 and 1996 PNAD. Estimations of the reduced form earnings model are performed first by using OLS without controlling for the potential endogeneity of child labor and schooling, and then by using a GMM estimation of instrumental variables models that include the set of instruments for child labor and schooling. The findings of the empirical investigations show that child labor has large negative impact on adult earnings for both male and female children even when controlling for schooling. In addition, the negative impact of starting to work as a child reverses at around age 14. Finally, different child labor activities are examined to determine if some are beneficial while others harmful with the finding that working in agriculture as a child appears to have no negative impact over and above the loss of education.

Cost of horse labor

Mode of access: Internet.

Cost of horse labor

Mode of access: Internet.

Microeconomic instability and children's human capital accumulation: the effects of idiosyncratic shocks to father's income on child labor, school drop-outs and repetition rates in Brazil

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of economic instability. In particular, we study the impact of idiosyncratic shocks to father’s income on children’s human capital accumulation variables such as school drop-outs, repetition rates and domestic and non-domestic labor. Although, the problem of child labor in Brazil has declined greatly during the last decade, the number of children working is still substantial. The low levels of educational attainment in Brazil are also a main cause for concern. The large rotating panel data set used allows for the estimation of the impacts of changes in occupational and income status of fathers on changes in his child’s time allocation circumstances. The empirical analysis is restricted to families with fathers, mothers and at least one child between 10 and 15 years of age in the main Brazilian metropolitan areas during the 1982-1999 period. We perform logistic regressions controlling for child characteristics (gender, age, if he/she is behind in school for age), parents characteristics (grade attainment and income) and time and location variables. The main variables analyzed are dynamic proxies of impulses and responses, namely: shocks to household head’s income and unemployment status, on the one hand and child’s probability of dropping out of school, of repeating a grade and of start working, on the other. The findings suggest that father’s income has a significant positive correlation with child’s dropping out of school and of repeating a grade. The findings do not suggest a significant relationship between a father’s becoming unemployed and a child entering the non-domestic labor market. However, the results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between a father becoming unemployed and a child beginning to work in domestic labor. There was also a positive correlation between father becoming unemployed and a child dropping out and repeating a grade. Both gender and age were highly significant with boys and older children being more likely to work, drop-out and repeat grades.

Liquidity Constraint and Child Labor In India: Is Market Really Incapable Of Eradicating It From Wage-Labor Households?

One way to measure the lower steady state equilibrium outcome in human capital development is the incidence of child labor in most of the developing countries. With the help of Indian household level data in an overlapping generation framework, we show that production loans under credit rationing are not optimally extended towards firms because of issues with adverse selection. More stringent rationing in the credit market creates a distortion in the labor market by increasing adult wage rate and the demand for child labor. Lower availability of funds under stringent rationing coupled with increased demand for loans induces the high risk firms to replace adult labor by child labor. A switch of regime from credit rationing to revelation regime can clear such imperfections in the labor market. The equilibrium higher wage rate elevates the household consumption to a significantly higher level than the subsistence under credit rationing and therefore higher level of human capital development is assured leading to no supply of child labor.

Direct cost of connecting, maintaining and disconnecting patient-controlled analgesia pump

Quantitative research that aimed to identify the mean total cost (MTC) of connecting, maintaining and disconnecting patient-controlled analgesia pump (PCA) in the management of pain. The non-probabilistic sample corresponded to the observation of 81 procedures in 17 units of the Central Institute of the Clinics Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sao Paulo. We calculated the MTC multiplying by the time spent by nurses at a unit cost of direct labor, adding the cost of materials and medications/solutions. The MTC of connecting was R$ 107.91; maintenance R$ 110.55 and disconnecting R$ 4.94. The results found will subsidize discussions about the need to transfer money from the Unified Health System to hospitals units that perform this technique of analgesic therapy and it will contribute to the cost management aimed at making efficient and effective decision-making in the allocation of available resources.

Conflict and child labor: evidence from poor households in Colombia

Colombia suffers from one of the longest civil conflicts in the world, which is believed to have had several consequences on the country’s economic and development performance. This study uses measures of central government deterrence effort as instruments of conflict to estimate the impact of conflict on children’s time allocation to two different types of work: housework and work performed outside the household for poor families living in small municipalities in Colombia. I find that conflict significantly increases the amount of time children allocate to work. Both housework, for girls, and work outside the household, for boys, increase with Guerrilla attacks. However, the later effect is the opposite for Paramilitary attacks.

'A load too heavy': Critical reflections on the child labor problem in Africa's small-scale mining sector

This paper provides an extended analysis of the child labor problem in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector, focusing specifically on the situation in sub-Saharan Africa. In recent years, the issue of child labor in ASM has garnered significant attention from the International Labor Organization (ILO), which has been particularly active in raising public awareness of the problem; and, has proceeded to implement policies and collaborative project work aimed at Curtailing children's participation in ASM activities in a number of African countries. The analysis concludes with a critical appraisal of an ILO project recently launched in the Talensi-Nabdam District in the Upper East Region of Ghana, which sheds light on how the child labor problem is being tackled in practice in ASM communities in sub-Saharan Africa. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Child labor and learning

This paper investigates the impact of working while in school on learning outcomes through the use of a unique micro panel dataset of Brazilian students. The potential endogeneity is addressed through the use of di erence-in-di erence and instrumental variable estimators. A negative e ect of working on learning outcomes in both math and Portuguese is found. The e ects of child work range from 3% to 8% of a standard deviation decline in test score which represents a loss of about a quarter to a half of a year of learning on average. We also explore the minimum legal age to entry in the labor market to induce an exogenous variation in child labor status. The results reinforce the detrimental e ects of child labor on learning. Additionally, it is found that this e ect is likely due to the interference of work with the time kids can devote to school and school work.

The causal effect of family size on child labor and education

This paper investigates the causal relationship between family size and child labor and education among brazilian children. More especifically, it analyzes the impact of family size on child labor, school attendance, literacy and school progression. It explores the exogenous variation in family size driven by the presence of twins in the family. The results are consistent under the reasonable assumption that the instrument is a random event. Using the nationally representative brazilian household survey (Pnad), detrimental effects are found on child labor for boys. Moreover, significant effects are obtained for school progression for girls caused by the exogenous presence of the young siblings in the household.

The long-term effects of conditional cash transfers on child labor and school enrollment

This paper investigates the long-term e ects of conditional cash transfers on school attainment and child labor. To this end, we construct a dynamic heterogeneous agent model, calibrate it with Brazilian data, and introduce a policy similar to the Brazilian Bolsa Fam lia. Our results suggest that this type of policy has a very strong impact on educational outcomes, sharply increasing primary school completion. The conditional transfer is also able to reduce the share of working children from 22% to 17%. We then compute the transition to the new steady state and show that the program actually increases child labor over the short run, because the transfer is not enough to completely cover the schooling costs, so children have to work to be able to comply with the program's schooling eligibility requirement. We also evaluate the impacts on poverty, inequality, and welfare.

The cost of hunger: Social and economic impact of child undernutrition in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) jointly with the World Program of Food (WFP) and recognized experts of the region developed a methodology that, using secondary information, estimate the opportunity cost derived from undernutrition. This methodology has been successfully applied in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic, where the cost of undernutrition was estimated at 6.7 billion dollars in 2004. The present study covers four countries in South America: Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru. The results indicate that the cost of the malnutrition in these countries reached 4.3 billion dollars in 2005, which is equivalent to 3.3 per cent of the GDP of these countries. The results strongly point out that child undernutrition is not only a problem of health or an unacceptable situation ethically, but it is a national problem, given the enormous social costs and the loss of opportunities that it imposes on the national economy.

The cost of hunger: Social and economic impact of child undernutrition in Central America and the Dominican Republic

This document presents the results derived from the analyses of the cost of undernutrition in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic. The study shows that not only are the effects reported valid for the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, but the resultant economic impact is also significant, representing between 1.7% and 11.4% of GDP. In this regard, productivity losses as a consequence of the higher death rate and the lower level of education account for 90% of the costs. Thus, in addition to the ethical imperative, eradicating undernutrition would yield benefits as well. Therefore, any programme that is effective in reducing the prevalence of this problem will have an impact on people's quality of life, and will also represent major savings for society. The greater the problem, the greater the challenge, but the greater the benefits as well, especially in terms of countries' production capacity.