IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v54y2016i1p139-158.html

Why Does Child Labor Persist With Declining Poverty?

Author

Listed:
  • Jayanta Sarkar
  • Dipanwita Sarkar

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="ecin12234-abs-0001"> We develop a dynamic overlapping generations model to highlight the role of income inequality in explaining the persistence of child labor under declining poverty. Differential investment in two forms of human capital—schooling and health—in the presence of inequality gives rise to a nonconvergent income distribution in the steady state characterized by multiple steady states of relative income with varying levels of education, health, and child labor. The child labor trap thus generated is shown to preserve itself despite rising per capita income. Policy recommendations include public provision of education targeted toward reducing schooling costs for the poor or raising the efficacy of public health infrastructure. (JEL I1, J2, O1, O2)

Suggested Citation

  • Jayanta Sarkar & Dipanwita Sarkar, 2016. "Why Does Child Labor Persist With Declining Poverty?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(1), pages 139-158, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:54:y:2016:i:1:p:139-158
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecin.2016.54.issue-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simone D’Alessandro & Tamara Fioroni, 2016. "Child labour and inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(1), pages 63-79, March.
    2. Jinnat Ara & Dipanwita Sarkar & Jayanta Sarkar, 2021. "Like mother like daughter? Occupational mobility among children under asset transfer program in Bangladesh," QuBE Working Papers 061, QUT Business School.
    3. Madeeha Gohar Qureshi & Saman Nazir & Hafsa Hina, 2014. "Child Work and Schooling in Pakistan— To What Extent Poverty and Other Demographic and Parental Background Matter?," PIDE-Working Papers 2014:105, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    4. Huamaní-Huapaya, Edson Raúl, 2019. "Persistencia Intergeneracional del Trabajo Infantil y Adolescente en Perú [Intergenerational Persistence of Child Labor in Peru]," MPRA Paper 101247, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Oryoie, Ali Reza & Alwang, Jeffrey & Tideman, Nicolaus, 2017. "Child Labor and Household Land Holding: Theory and Empirical Evidence from Zimbabwe," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 45-58.
    6. Chakraborty, Kamalika & Chakraborty, Bidisha, 2016. "Learning by doing, low level equilibrium trap, and effect of domestic policies on child labour," MPRA Paper 74712, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Wang, Dongqin & Wang-Lu, Huaxin, 2025. "Land expropriation, child schooling, and child housework: Evidence from China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    8. Atsue Mizushima, 2021. "Child labor, social capital, and economic development," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 1648-1667, August.
    9. Chakraborty, Bidisha & Chakraborty, Kamalika, 2016. "Low Level Equilibrium Trap, Unemployment, School Quality, Child Labour and Human Capital Formation," MPRA Paper 74621, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Lutfullah Lutf & Shahadat I Haq Yasini, 2018. "Factors Contributing to Child Labor in Afghanistan: A Case Study in Jalalabad City," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 348-372, September.
    11. Bidisha Chakraborty & Kamalika Chakraborty, 2014. "Child Labour, human capital formation and size of landholding: short run and long run analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(3), pages 2024-2037.
    12. Kamalika Chakraborty & Bidisha Chakraborty, 2018. "Publisher Correction: Low level equilibrium trap, unemployment, efficiency of education system, child labour and human capital formation," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 125(1), pages 105-105, September.
    13. Aïssata Coulibaly, 2016. "Revisiting the Relationship between Financial Development and Child Labor in Developing Countries: Do Inequality and Institutions Matter?," Working Papers halshs-01402997, HAL.
    14. Namra Munir & Muhammad Asif Shahzad & Navid Jamil Malik, 2022. "Sources Of Child Labor Among Primary School Students In Punjab Province," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 11(2), pages 313-319.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O2 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:54:y:2016:i:1:p:139-158. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.