This paper investigated how parents' informal work relates to their children's academic performance. We interviewed the heads of households with 83 school-aged children in peri-urban Kathmandu to obtain information on parental occupation and child schooling. We also interviewed key informants...

This paper examines how access to informal insurance shapes family responses to reductions in social welfare benefits, and how these adjustments affect children's development. In 2003, Israel reformed its child allowance program, significantly reducing unconditional cash benefits for large...

In this study, we investigate the role of matrilineal kinship norms for gender gaps in labor market outcomes. We analyze the implementation of a reform that significantly altered the customary inheritance system by restricting practices within matrilineal ethnic groups, while those of...

This paper investigates how a change in marital status can influence labour market-related child penalties, by comparing married couples and those whose marriage is dissolved after the birth of their first child. We take advantage of the rich administrative data from New Zealand and show that...

Despite SDG target 8.7 aiming to eliminate child labour by 2025, 137.6 million children remain affected worldwide, highlighting the urgent need for action. Effective approaches go beyond prohibition, addressing root causes through social protection, education, decent work, and childcare systems,...

This paper studies the impact of the home sewing machine on women's work and intergenerational mobility - an innovation that enabled women to generate income from within the household. Marketed directly to women as a tool for both domestic use and paid work, it provides a unique setting to...

Child labor remains widespread in Bangladesh. The country has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ILO's Minimum Age Convention, and the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention. The government has developed a legal and policy framework to eliminate all forms of child labor by...

Despite substantial efforts to improve food and nutrient intake in the last decades, child undernutrition remains a daunting challenge, particularly in developing countries' rural areas. Today, frequent extreme weather events harm agricultural production, exacerbating the food shortage problem...

Basu and Van (1998) show that a ban on child labour may be self-enforcing under the extreme assumption that, above the subsistence level, no amount of consumption can compensate parents for the disutility of child labour. We show that a partial ban may be self-enforcing also in a more general...

Hundreds of millions of Indian children are too short for their age. In this paper we explore whether early marriage of women in India contributes to this phenomenon. Using India's national health surveys and age at menarche as an instrument, we find that one year earlier mother's marriage...

Street vending is an important source of self-employment for the urban poor. I combine observational, survey, and experimental data from Delhi to study this market. Partnering with vendors to randomize prices and passersby they solicit, I find that even with identical goods, child vendors are...

The economic literature has shown that exogenous transitory shocks affect education by changing the opportunity cost of children. We argue that this is only part of the explanation. When permanent, shocks may change contracts and the organization of labour by eroding the productive structure and...

This note summarizes a systematic approach developed in 2021-2023 by the Social Sustainability and Inclusion (SSI) team of the Ghana Country Management Unit (CMU) to strengthen the management of child labor risk in the portfolio of projects of the CMU. The approach evolved from two processes,...