Is Child Labor Harmful? The Impact of Working Earlier in Life on Adult Earnings
Abstract
This paper explores the question: is working as a child harmful to an individual in terms of adult outcomes in earnings? Though an extremely important question, little is known about the effect of child labor on adult outcomes. Estimations of an instrumental variables earnings model on data from Brazil show that child labor has a large negative impact on adult earnings for male children even when controlling for schooling and that the negative impact of starting to work as a child reverses at around ages 12-14.Download Info
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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 3027.Length: 55 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2007
Date of revision:
Publication status: published in: Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2011, 59 (2), 345 - 385
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3027
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Related research
Keywords: adult outcomes; Brazil; child labor;Other versions of this item:
- Patrick M. Emerson & Andr� Portela Souza, 2011. "Is Child Labor Harmful? The Impact of Working Earlier in Life on Adult Earnings," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 345 - 385.
- J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- O12 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- O54 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2007-09-24 (All new papers)
- NEP-DEV-2007-09-24 (Development)
- NEP-HEA-2007-09-24 (Health Economics)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Vladimir Ponczek & Andre Portela Souza, 2012.
"New Evidence of the Causal Effect of Family Size on Child Quality in a Developing Country,"
Journal of Human Resources,
University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(1), pages 64-106.
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