Child Labor and the Public Schools

The Public Schools and the Abnormal Child

One of the criticisms which is often leveled against the public school system of the United States is that the instruction is too mechanical; that the public schools tend to treat all children as if they were alike, both physically and mentally. The tendency in modern education to reach the individual needs of the children should meet this objection. The administrators of our public schools are...

Labor Strife in Public Schools: Does it Affect Education Production?

Public Health in the Economics of Child Labor

Most of the world’s economically active children work by their parents’ side, often in a family farm or business. A 2000 UNICEF project surveyed working children in 36 developing countries [1]. The data represent more than 120 million children ages 5 to 14. Although nearly 70 percent of children in these countries spend time in some form of economic activity or domestic chores, less than 3 perc...

Local Labor Demand and Child Labor

This paper uses micro data from the Brazilian PNAD between 1981 and 2002 to ascertain the role of local labor demand play in shaping work and schooling decisions of children aged 10-15. Using male adult employment by state and year as a proxy for labor demand, we find evidence that contrary to the widespread view that child labor is procyclical among young children (ages 1012) employment (schoo...

1 Child Labor , Schooling , and Child Ability

Using data we collected in rural Burkina Faso, we examine how children’s cognitive abilities influence households’ decisions to invest in their education. To address the endogeneity of child ability measures, we use rainfall shocks experienced in utero or early childhood to instrument for ability. Negative shocks in utero lead to 0.24 standard deviations lower ability z-scores, corresponding wi...