Keeping kids working.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: The folly of child labor bans - Brief article

Child labor bans aim to improve children's welfare by getting them out of the workplace and into school. But do they actually do this?

A study published in October by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined changes in child labor data in India after 1986, when the country banned employing children under age 14 in manufacturing. The researchers--economists Prashant Bharadwaj of the University of California at San Diego, Leah K. Lakdawala of Michigan State University, and Nicholas Li of the University of Toronto--found that the law had perverse results: "Child wages decrease and child labor increases."

Poor Indian...