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Why should we care about child labor? The education, labor market, and health consequences of child labor

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  • Beegle, Kathleen
  • Dehejia, Rajeev
  • Gatti, Roberta

Abstract

Although there is extensive literature on the determinants of child labor and many initiatives aimed at combating it, there is limited evidence on the consequences of child labor on socioeconomic outcomes such as education, wages, and health. The authors evaluate the causal effect of child labor participation on these outcomes using panel data from Vietnam and an instrumental variables strategy. Five years subsequent to the child labor experience, they find significant negative effects on school participation and educational attainment, but also find substantially higher earnings for those (young) adults who worked as children. The authors find no significant effects on health. Over a longer horizon, they estimate that from age 30 onward the forgone earnings attributable to lost schooling exceed any earnings gain associated with child labor and that the net present discounted value of child labor is positive for discount rates of 11.5 percent or higher. The authors show that child labor is prevalent among households likely to have higher borrowing costs, that are farther from schools, and whose adult members experienced negative returns to their own education. This evidence suggests that reducing child labor will require facilitating access to credit and will also require households to be forward looking.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 3479.

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Date of creation: 01 Jan 2005
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3479

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Keywords: Environmental Economics&Policies; Children and Youth; Labor Standards; Labor Policies; Street Children; Street Children; Youth and Governance; Children and Youth; Environmental Economics&Policies; Labor Standards;

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