Journal Issue: World Bank Economic Review, Volume 17, Issue 2
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Volume
17
Number
2
Issue Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
1564-698X
Journal
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
Journal Volume
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Articles
Publication
Conditional Cash Transfers, Schooling, and Child Labor : Micro-Simulating Brazil's Bolsa Escola Program
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
A growing number of developing economies
are providing cash transfers to poor people that require
certain behaviors on their part, such as attending school or
regularly visiting health care facilities. A simple ex ante
methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and
used to assess the bolsa escola program in Brazil. The
results suggest that about 60 percent of poor 10- to
15-year-olds not in school enroll in response to the
program. The program reduces the incidence of poverty by
only a little more than one percentage point, however, and
the Gini coefficient falls just half a point. Results are
better for measures more sensitive to the bottom of the
distribution, but the effect is never large.
Publication
Child Labor and Development : An Introduction
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
Long neglected by economists, child
labor has experienced a sudden resurgence of interest as a
subject of research and analysis since the mid-1990s. This
is surprising at first glance, because the global incidence
of child labor has been on the decline for several decades
now. What accounts for the increased interest? One factor is
the growing emphasis in the development literature on
poverty reduction, particularly among the most vulnerable
sections of the population, which includes children,
especially working children. Simultaneously, with the
heightened recognition of the importance of human capital
accumulation as a catalyst and perhaps even a prerequisite
for development, child labor is viewed as a major impediment
to economic progress.
Publication
Child Labor : Lessons from the Historical Experience of Today's Industrial Economies
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
Child labor was more prevalent in
19th-century industrializers than it is in developing
countries today. It was particularly extensive in the
earliest industrializers. This pattern may be a source of
optimism signaling the spread of technologies that have
little use for child labor and of values that endorse the
preservation and protection of childhood. Today and
historically, orphaned and fatherless children and those in
large families are most vulnerable. Efficient interventions
to curb child labor involve fiscal transfers to these
children and active policies toward street children. Changes
in capitalist labor markets (including technology), family
strategies, state policies, and cultural norms are examined
to shed light on the causes, chronology, and consequences of
child labor.
Publication
Child Farm Labor : The Wealth Paradox
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
This article is motivated by the
remarkable observation that children of land-rich households
are often more likely to be in work than the children of
land-poor households. The vast majority of working children
in developing economies are in agricultural work,
predominantly on farms operated by their families. Land is
the most important store of wealth in agrarian societies,
and it is typically distributed very unequally. These facts
challenge the common presumption that child labor emerges
from the poorest households. This article suggests that this
apparent paradox can be explained by failures of the markets
for labor and land. Credit market failure will tend to
weaken the force of this paradox. These effects are modeled
and estimates obtained using survey data from rural Pakistan
and Ghana. The main result is that the wealth paradox
persists for girls in both countries, whereas for boys it
disappears after conditioning on other covariates.
Publication
Children's Working Hours and School Enrollment : Evidence from Pakistan and Nicaragua
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
Although much of the literature on child
labor looks at the decision on whether to send a child to
school or to work (or both), little attention has focused on
the number of hours worked. This article analyzes the
determinants of school attendance and hours worked by
children in Pakistan and Nicaragua. A theoretical model of
children's labor supply is used to simultaneously
estimate the school attendance decision and the hours
worked, using a full model maximum likelihood estimator. The
model analyzes the marginal effects of explanatory
variables, conditioning on latent states, that is, the
propensity of the household to send the child to work or
not. These marginal effects are in some cases rather
different across latent states, with important policy implications.
Publication
Child Labor : A Normative Perspective
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
Examining child labor through the lenses
of weak agency, distributive inequality, and harm suggests
that not all work performed by children is equally morally
objectionable. Some work, especially work that does not
interfere with or undermine their health or education, may
allow children to develop skills they need to become
well-functioning adults and broaden their future
opportunities. Other work, including child prostitution and
bonded labor, is unambiguously detrimental to children.
Eliminating these forms of child labor should be the highest
priority. Blanket bans on all child labor may drive families
to choose even worse options for their children, however.
Moreover, child labor is often a symptom of other problems
poverty, inadequate education systems, discrimination within
families, ethnic conflicts, inadequately protected human
rights, weak democratic institutions that will not be
eliminated by banning child labor.
Publication
Targeting Child Labor in Debt Bondage : Evidence, Theory, and Policy Implications
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
Despite recent multilateral efforts to
single out child labor in debt bondage as one of the worst
forms of child labor, several important questions have yet
to be addressed: How pervasive is the phenomenon? Are there
systematic correlations between the incidence of children in
debt bondage and the economic, legislative, and financial
development indicators of the economy? How does an
understanding of these correlates affect the way national
and international policy measures aimed at targeting this
form of child labor are perceived? This article addresses
each of these questions. The empirical findings suggest
strong correlation between the likelihood of the incidence
of child labor in debt bondage with the stage of development
of an economy, the stage of financial development, and
enforcement of core labor rights. Building on this evidence,
the article presents a theoretical model that highlights the
drawbacks and merits of a number of policies aimed at
putting checks on child labor in debt bondage.
Publication
The Global Child Labor Problem : What Do We Know and What Can We Do?
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
The problem of child labor has moved
from a matter of regional and national concern to one of
international debate and possible global persuasion and
policy intervention. In crafting policy for mitigating this
enormous problem of our times, it is important to start with
a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the
phenomenon. What gives rise to child labor, and what are its
consequences? What interventions might end child labor
without hurting children? A well-meaning but poorly designed
policy can exacerbate the poverty in which these laboring
children live, even leading to starvation. The article
surveys the large and rapidly growing literature on this
subject, focusing mainly on the new literature based on
modern economic theory and econometrics. It also looks at
some of the broad policy implications of these new findings,
with the objective of contributing to better informed
discussion and policy design.
Publication
Understanding Children's Work : An Interagency Data and Research Cooperation Project
(Washington, DC: World Bank,
2003-05)
During the 1990s broad interest
resurfaced among the public and policymakers on the subject
of child labor, this time concentrating on the plight of
children in the developing world. The children summit in New
York (1990), the world summit on social development in
Copenhagen (1995), and the International Labour Organization
(ILO) adoption of convention 182 on elimination of the worst
forms of child labour (1999) are clear evidence of the
increasing international concern. In several conferences
leading up to the 1999 ILO convention (Geneva 1996,
Amsterdam 1997, Cartagena 1997, and Oslo 1997), the same
commitment to combat child labor was expressed, along with
the need for closer cooperation between international
organizations, a point emphasized especially in Oslo. With
the adoption of the millennium development goals in 2000,
the realization quickly grew that international and national
efforts to address key developmental objectives will
objectives will be hampered unless there are adequate data
for measuring monitoring and managing results; sufficient
capacity to use the data at the local level supplemented by
technical assistance; donor harmonization of policies for
setting global (rather than donor) priorities and exploring
synergies among all stakeholders; and conditional on the
previous three areas timely and relevant policy interventions.