Child Labor and the Labor Supply of Other Household Members: Evidence from 1920 America

摘要

Although there is no lack of empirical evidence on the determinants of child labor (see Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik, 2004; Ales-sandro Cigno and Furio C. Rosati, 2005, and references therein), much less is known about the effects of child labor. This paper tries to partially fill this gap by investigating the effect of an exogenous increase in a child's labor force participation on household labor supply decisions among urban households in early-twentieth-century America using micro data from the 1920 U.S. Census. This paper is not the first to empirically investigate the effect of changes in one individual's labor supply on other household members' decision to work. Typically, these analyses refer to the effect of a husband's unemployment on his spouse's labor supply decision (Shelly Lundberg, 1985). Little is known, however, about the effect of children's changes in labor force participation on their parents' and siblings' labor supply, and this paper attempts specifically to address this issue. It is plausible that it is parents who decide on their children's use of time and retain control over their children's earnings. By analyzing how work effort is real- located in a household in response to an exogenous increase in a child's labor market participation, one can learn something about parents' preferences and the constraints and opportunities they face in deciding on their children's time use.