Child Labor, Income Shocks, and Access to Credit

Beegle, Kathleen ; Dehejia, Rajeev H. ; Gatti, Roberta

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNT;    ADULT MORTALITY;    CHILD LABOR;    CHILD LABOR ISSUES;    CONDITIONS FOR CHILDREN;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-3075
RP-ID  :  WPS3075

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Although a growing theoreticalliterature points to credit constraints as an importantsource of inefficiently high child labor, little work hasbeen done to assess its empirical relevance. Using paneldata from Tanzania, the authors find that households respondto transitory income shocks by increasing child labor, butthat the extent to which child labor is used as a buffer islower when households have access to credit. These findingscontribute to the empirical literature on the permanentincome hypothesis by showing that credit-constrainedhouseholds actively use child labor to smooth their income.Moreover, they highlight a potentially important determinantof child labor and, as a result, a mechanism that can beused to tackle it.