Family farming, child labour and the wealth paradox: evidence from Mali

Possession of land is often associated with higher levels of child labour. This paper will look closer at the “wealth paradox†by testing in rural Mali the relationship between landownership and one of the hidden forms of child labour, namely family-based work. We also experiment a nested logit model in relation to parental decisions processes to send children to work. Findings show that the demand for children helpers within the family increases to a certain threshold with the rise of land owned. Conversely, the larger the land size, the lower the probability for a child to work away from the family farm.