IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v112y2004i1p240-248.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rotten Parents and Child Labor

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine Bommier
  • Pierre Dubois

Abstract

We show that taking into account the consequences of child labor on both childhood welfare and human capital investment, instead of focusing exclusively on the human capital dimension, brings new insights on the economic analysis of child labor. In particular, there are new sources of potential inefficiencies that appear when we assume that labor induces some disutility. In such a case, household decisions regarding child labor may indeed be inefficient even if household members are altruistic, transfers are not at a corner and there are no market imperfections. Also, the presence of child labor disutility leads to an equilibrium where the conditions for an exogenous reduction of child labor to be Pareto improving are less likely to be fulfilled. This paper stresses therefore the fact that economic analysis should not forget one of the most important aspects of child labor, namely that it does not make children happy.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine Bommier & Pierre Dubois, 2004. "Rotten Parents and Child Labor," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 240-248, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:112:y:2004:i:1:p:240-248
    DOI: 10.1086/379938
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/379938
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/379938?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. Browning & P. A. Chiappori, 1998. "Efficient Intra-Household Allocations: A General Characterization and Empirical Tests," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1241-1278, November.
    2. Jean-Marie Baland & James A. Robinson, 2000. "Is Child Labor Inefficient?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(4), pages 663-679, August.
    3. Bergstrom, Theodore C, 1989. "A Fresh Look at the Rotten Kid Theorem--and Other Household Mysteries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1138-1159, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Edmonds, Eric V., 2008. "Child Labor," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 57, pages 3607-3709, Elsevier.
    2. Fabre, Alice & Pallage, Stéphane, 2015. "Child labor, idiosyncratic shocks, and social policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 394-411.
    3. Moussa Keita, 2014. "Pauvreté et arbitrage entre scolarisation et travail des enfants au Mali," Working Papers halshs-01064821, HAL.
    4. Chaudhuri, Sanjukta, 2009. "The School Going Child Worker: An Analysis of Poverty, Asset Inequality and Child Education in Rural India," MPRA Paper 19687, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Lutfullah Lutf & Shahadat I Haq Yasini, 2018. "Factors Contributing to Child Labor in Afghanistan: A Case Study in Jalalabad City," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 348-372, September.
    6. Edmonds, Eric V. & Pavcnik, Nina, 2005. "The effect of trade liberalization on child labor," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 401-419, March.
    7. Edmonds, Eric V. & Pavcnik, Nina, 2006. "International trade and child labor: Cross-country evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 115-140, January.
    8. Gugl, Elisabeth & Leroux, Justin, 2011. "Share the gain, share the pain? Almost transferable utility, changes in production possibilities, and bargaining solutions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 133-143.
    9. Eric V. Edmonds, 2005. "Does Child Labor Decline with Improving Economic Status?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(1).
    10. Wani Nelson Waru, 2020. "Impact of Trade Openness and Foreign Direct Investment on Child Labor; Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries," International Journal of Science and Business, IJSAB International, vol. 4(8), pages 127-145.
    11. Shunsuke Sakamoto, 2006. "Parental Attitudes toward Children and Child Labor: Evidence from Rural India," Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series d05-136, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    12. Sonia Bhalotra, 2004. "Parent Altruism, Cash Transfers and Child Poverty," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 04/561, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    13. Elise S. Brezis, 2012. "Population Dynamics and Economic Growth: Should We Adopt Different Frameworks for Poor and Rich Countries?," Working Papers 2012-04, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    14. Eric V. Edmonds, 2004. "Does Illiquidity Alter Child Labor and Schooling Decisions? Evidence from Household Responses to Anticipated Cash Transfers in South Africa," NBER Working Papers 10265, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jara-Díaz, Sergio & Rosales-Salas, Jorge, 2017. "Beyond transport time: A review of time use modeling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 209-230.
    2. Denis Beninger & François Laisney, 2006. "On the performance of unitary models of household labor supply estimated on “collective” data with taxation," Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 81, pages 5-36.
    3. Irineu Evangelista de Carvalho Filho, 2012. "Household Income as a Determinant of Child Labor and School Enrollment in Brazil: Evidence from a Social Security Reform," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(2), pages 399-435.
    4. Gugl, Elisabeth & Leroux, Justin, 2011. "Share the gain, share the pain? Almost transferable utility, changes in production possibilities, and bargaining solutions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 133-143.
    5. Lingxin Hao & V. Joseph Hotz & Ginger Zhe Jin, 2000. "Games Daughters and Parents Play: Teenage Childbearing, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers," NBER Working Papers 7670, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Pierre André Chiappori & José Ignacio Gimenez Nadal & José Alberto Molina & Alexandros Theloudis & Jorge Velilla, 2020. "Intrahousehold Commitment and Intertemporal Labor Supply," LISER Working Paper Series 2020-11, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    7. Arthur Lewbel & Krishna Pendakur, 2024. "Estimating a model of inefficient cooperation and consumption in collective households," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 865-907, September.
    8. Olivier Bargain & Miriam Beblo & Denis Beninger & Richard Blundell & Raquel Carrasco & Maria-Concetta Chiuri & François Laisney & Valérie Lechene & Nicolas Moreau & Michal Myck & Javier Ruiz-Castillo , 2006. "Does the Representation of Household Behavior Matter for Welfare Analysis of Tax-benefit Policies? An Introduction," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 99-111, June.
    9. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Donni, Olivier, 2009. "Non-unitary Models of Household Behavior: A Survey of the Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 4603, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Leonardo Bursztyn & Lucas C. Coffman, 2012. "The Schooling Decision: Family Preferences, Intergenerational Conflict, and Moral Hazard in the Brazilian Favelas," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(3), pages 359-397.
    11. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Donni, Olivier, 2006. "Les modèles non unitaires de comportement du ménage : un survol de la littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 82(1), pages 9-52, mars-juin.
    12. Lechene, Valérie & Preston, Ian, 2011. "Noncooperative household demand," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 504-527, March.
    13. Smith, V. Kerry & Van Houtven, George, 1998. "Non-Market Valuation and the Household," RFF Working Paper Series dp-98-31, Resources for the Future.
    14. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Iyigun, Murat & Weiss, Yoram, 2007. "Public Goods, Transferable Utility and Divorce Laws," IZA Discussion Papers 2646, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Patrick M. Emerson & Andre Portela Souza, 2002. "Bargaining over Sons and Daughters: Child Labor, School Attendance and Intra-Household Gender Bias in Brazil," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0213, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    16. Lutfullah Lutf & Shahadat I Haq Yasini, 2018. "Factors Contributing to Child Labor in Afghanistan: A Case Study in Jalalabad City," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 348-372, September.
    17. Anyck Dauphin & Abdel‐Rahmen El Lahga & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2011. "Are Children Decision‐Makers within the Household?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(553), pages 871-903, June.
    18. Baland, Jean-Marie & Robinson, James A., 2002. "Rotten parents," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 341-356, June.
      • Baland, J.M. & Robinson, J.A., 1998. "Rotten Parents," Papers 207, Notre-Dame de la Paix, Sciences Economiques et Sociales.
    19. Jaime Andres Sarmiento Espinel, 2012. "Children and non-participation in a model of collective household labor supply," Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos 2012-14, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos.
    20. Valérie Lechene & Ian Preston, 2005. "Household Nash equilibrium with voluntarily contributed public goods," IFS Working Papers W05/06, Institute for Fiscal Studies.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:112:y:2004:i:1:p:240-248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.