TY  - JOUR
AU  - Edmonds,Eric V.
TI  - Does Child Labor Decline with Improving Economic Status?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10134
PY  - 2003
Y2  - December 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10134
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10134.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric V. Edmonds
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH  03755
Tel: 603/646-2944
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: Eric.V.Edmonds@Dartmouth.edu
AB  - From 1993 to 1997, GDP per capita in Vietnam grew by between 6 and 7 percent annually. Child labor declined by 28 percent over this period. Using a simple, nonparametric decomposition, I investigate the relationship between improvements in per capita expenditure and child labor with a panel dataset of Vietnamese households that spans this episode of growth. I find that improvements in per capita expenditure can explain 80 percent of the decline in child labor that occurs in households whose expenditures improve enough to move out of poverty. This finding suggests a previously undocumented role for economic growth in the amelioration of child labor.
ER  -