Social norms and child labor

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Shirit Katav Herz,Gil S. Epstein
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12862

Rev Dev Econ. 2022;26:627–638. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode

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627

© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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INTRODUCTION

The phenomenon of child labor touches the lives and welfare of 160 million children worldwide

(UNICEF/ILO joint publication, 2021). It has adverse long- term economic consequences, espe-

cially for the children, their families, and the countries where it is common, but also for the world

population as a whole. As such, much research is aimed at understanding its main causes and

determining suitable policies to diminish its scope.

Household poverty is usually claimed to be a major factor in the persistence of child labor. A

milestone in this field was set by Basu and Van (1998), who showed that parents will send their

Received: 14 March 2019

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Revised: 27 December 2021

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Accepted: 3 January 2022

DOI: 10.1111/rode.12862

REGULAR ARTICLE

Social norms and child labor

ShiritKatav Herz1

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Gil S.Epstein2,3,4

1School of Management and Economics,

The Academic College of Tel- Aviv- Yaffo,

Tel- Aviv- Yaffo, Israel

2Department of Economics, Bar- Ilan

University, Ramat- Gan, Israel

3IZA, Bonn, Germany

4CReAM, London, United Kingdom

Correspondence

Shirit Katav Herz, School of Management

and Economics, The Academic College

of Tel- Aviv- Yaffo, Rabenu Yeruham St.

Tel- Aviv- Yaffo 6818211, Israel.

Email: shirit@mta.ac.il

Abstract

Child labor is a widespread phenomenon and therefore

is of interest to both researchers and policy- makers.

Various reasons for the existence of child labor have

been proposed with the goal of designing appropriate

solutions. While household poverty is viewed as the

main reason for child labor, we choose to focus on the

phenomenon that parents who worked during their

own childhood are more likely to send their children to

work. We also look at the effect of social norms on the

parents’ child labor decision and analyze both these ef-

fects on the supply of labor and equilibrium in the labor

market. Finally, we suggest an explanation for the phe-

nomenon of poor societies with similar income levels

that differ significantly in literacy rates, and we propose

policy improvements.

KEYWORDS

child labor, social norms, intergenerational transmission

JEL CLASSIFICATION

D13; D64; D91; J22; Z10