This paper considers the effect of child care costs on two labor market decisions of single mothers--whether to participate in the labor market and whether to receive AFDC. Weekly child care expenditures are estimated for all women in the sample (taken from the 1984 Panel of SIPP), whether or not they are currently using nonmaternal child care. These expenditures are then included as an indepen...

Child Care Assistance: Are Subsidies or Tax Credits Better? We evaluate price subsidies and tax credits for child care. We focus on partnered women’s labor supply, household income and welfare, demand for formal and informal child care and government expenditure. Using Australian data, we estimate a joint, discrete structural model of labor supply and child care demand. We introduce two methodo...

The previous literature suggests that the determinants of child labor are largely country specific, indicating that any policies aimed at reducing child labor must look carefully at the causes of child labor in context. My thesis adds to the empirical work on child labor by investigating what household and community characteristics are most common among working children in the Philippines, usin...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between social contextual factors and child and adolescent labor. METHODS Population-based cohort study carried out with 2,512 families living in 23 subareas of a large urban city in Brazil from 2000 to 2002. A random one-stage cluster sampling was used to select families. Data were obtained through individual household interviews using questionnaires. Th...

From 1993 to 1997, GDP per capita in Vietnam grew by between 6 and 7 percent annually. Child labor declined by 28 percent over this period. Using a simple, nonparametric decomposition, I investigate the relationship between improvements in per capita expenditure and child labor with a panel dataset of Vietnamese households that spans this episode of growth. I find that improvements in per capit...

This paper examines the extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) affects child labor. Using 1995 data for 145 countries, we find that, contrary to common fears, FDI is negatively correlated with child labor. This effect, however, disappears when controlling for per capita income. After doing so, we find no robust effect of either FDI or international trade on child labor. This result is ...

Rising rates of maternal employment among current and former welfare recipients have increased the use of non-parental child care. Little empirical work examines the relationship between women’s labor supply and the geographic supply of child care. We combine census data with child care provider information for the state of Maryland to explore the relationship between female labor supply and th...

This paper exploits a unique long-horizon longitudinal data set from Tanzania to examine the long-run consequences of child labor on education, employment choices, and marital status. Using crop shocks as instruments, our 2SLS estimates indicate that child labor is causally associated with reduced educational attainment (both as measured by the number of school years as well as by an indicator ...

A popular form of action to curb child labor and uphold international labor standards in general is a product boycott by consumers. There are labeling agencies that inform us if, for instance, a carpet or a hand-stitched soccer ball is free of child labor. The presence of a consumer boycott will typically mean that products tainted by child labor will command a lower price on the market than on...