The Macroeconomics of Child Labor Regulation

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 mul...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American economic review Vol. 95; no. 5; pp. 1492 - 1524
Main Authors Doepke, Matthias, Zilibotti, Fabrizio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Nashville American Economic Association 01.12.2005
Subjects
Adult education
Adults
Capitalism
Child labor
Child labour
Econometrics
Economic analysis
Economic models
Fertility
Labor law
Labor market
Labour economics
Labour force
Labour market participation
Legislation
Macroeconomics
Mathematical methods
Parents
Regulation
Skilled labor
Steady state economies
Studies
Workers
United Kingdom > UK
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Summary: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.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/000282805775014425