Child Labor Under Cash and In-Kind Transfers : Evidence from Rural Mexico

This paper studies the effects of cash versus in-kind transfers on child labor. Using data from a program which randomly transferred either cash or a basket of food to poor households in Mexico, I find that the cash transfer reduced children's work participation by a significantly larger margin than the in-kind transfer. Both transfers had large negative effects on child labor among recipients in the middle tertile of the income distribution. However, the in-kind transfer did not reduce child labor among children in the bottom tertile, whereas the cash transfer did. Moreover, transfer recipients in different income tertiles adjust child labor on different margins (extensive versus intensive). I show that the different margins of adjustment across the income distribution can be rationalized by a model in which preferences for schooling respect a luxury axiom and the household could forego child labor earnings only when the transfer pushes consumption above subsistence