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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

A series of articles beginning with Basu and Van (1989) argue that a ban on child labour may be self-enforcing in the sense that, once an equilibrium where only adults work is established, parents may have no incentive to depart from it, and the ban is no longer required. This important result...

Basu and Van (1998) show that a ban on child labour may be self-enforcing if, 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, but a total one never is, if education is available,...

The study aims to examine whether beggar children are victims of forced labor, as well as to identify the manifestations of forced labor in beggar children, and assess whether forced child begging relates to deteriorated health-related quality of life and mental health. The study focused on the...

The study aims to examine whether beggar children are victims of forced labor, as well as to identify the manifestations of forced labor in beggar children, and assess whether forced child begging relates to deteriorated health-related quality of life and mental health. The study focused on the...

The paper was motivated to test whether the high child labor prevalence observed in Ethiopia is explained by the poverty (luxury) hypothesis or wealth paradox theories. The data for this study is the Young Lives project, consisting of 1803 children units (a total of 7212 children in four...

Purpose - This paper aims to explore the factors leading to the phenomenon of child trafficking in Egypt, how deeply it runs through the Egyptian society and evaluate the state's efforts to combat it. Design/methodology/approach - This research paper uses a case study method applied to the...

We study the effects of a Bolivian law that introduced benefits and protections for child workers (who are overwhelmingly informal workers) and lowered the de facto legal working age from 14 to 10. We employ a difference-in-discontinuity approach that exploits the variation in the law's...

This paper examines how rural households cope with climate change related rainfall shocks by re-allocating children's time between domestic activities and school attendance. Households affected by an unanticipated rainfall shock face an inter-temporal trade-off between current household income...