American Economic Review Vol. 95 No. 5 2005
The Macroeconomics of Child Labor Regulation
open access
Abstract
We develop a positive theory of the adoption of child labor laws. Workers who compete with children in the labor market support a child labor ban, unless their own working children provide a large fraction of family income. Fertility decisions lock agents into specific political preferences, and multiple steady states can arise. The introduction of child labor laws can be triggered by skill-biased technological change, which induces parents to choose smaller families. The theory can account for the observation that, in Britain, regulations were first introduced after a period of rising wage inequality, and coincided with rapid fertility decline.
- DOI
- 10.1257/000282805775014425
- Volume
- 95
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1492-1524
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref