Lifetime Health Consequences of Child Labor in Brazil

The health consequences of child labor may take time to manifest themselves. This studyexamines whether children who began working at a young age experience increasedincidence of illness or physical disability as adults.. When child labor and schooling aretreated as chosen without consideration of unobserved abilities or health endowments, childlabor appears to have small adverse effects on a wide variety of health measures. Someadverse health consequences such as heart disease or hypertension seem unlikely to becaused by child labor. However, when we allow unobserved health and ability endowmentsto alter the age of labor market entry and years of schooling completed, the joint effects ofchild labor and schooling on health become larger while the less plausible healthconsequences lose significance. Results imply that delaying entry into child labor whileincreasing time in school significantly lowers the probability of early onset of physicalailments such as back problems, arthritis, or reduced strength or stamina. However, ourmethods are not able to distinguish between the health impacts of child labor from theimpacts of reduced time in school.[...]