I use the air-bridge denial policy imposed in 1995, which reduced dramatically the production of coca leaves in Peru. The Peruvian LSMS allows a comparison before and after the counter-narcotics policy of rural children living in coca-grower states with children in non-grower states. Overall, the results indicate that child labor increase in coca-grower states suggesting that the income effect is large enough to make rural households facing adverse economic conditions to resort in child labor.

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In this paper we investigate the impact that the child's lifetime uncertainty may have on the parents' decision to send their child to school or to work, in the absence of insurance mechanisms. We show that the level of child labor may be inefficiently high or low depending on the altruism parameters values and on the intergenerational transfers. Finally, we show that cash transfers conditional on child's schooling may restore efficiency in parents' decision concerning child labor.

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Is working as young laborer harmful to an individual in terms of adult income? This question is explored through the utilization of a unique set of instruments that control for the decision to work as a child and the decision of how much schooling to acquire in Brazil. It finds that child labor has large negative impact on adult earnings even when controlling for schooling. In addition, the negative impact of starting to work as a child reverses at around age 14.

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Parents discriminate based on birth order. Data from the 2000 ENNIV revealed that oldest children are more likely to work. A U-shaped relationship with birth order was identified as well as differential effects depending on parental opportunities and assets. Parental education was reduces the incidence of child labor, and the birth order was insignificant for none or tertiary education. The productive assets increased the probability of child labor and the significance of the birth order effects

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This paper applies a collective model of the household to analyze the impact of women's decision power on children's amount of work. The model predicts that when the mother has less power than her husband, the impact on child labor is negative. Once the wife gets more power the relationship is reversed. The prediction is confirmed using new data from Mexico. In the data, the distribution of power among parents is such that an increase in the mother's power would reduce the amount of child labor.

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We examine the relationship between socio-economic status, child health, parenting quality, and cognitive development of pre-school children in Ecuador. We find that wealth and parental education are “protective” of cognitive development: Children from wealthier households and with more educated parents have higher scores on a test of vocabulary recognition, especially at older ages. We also show that child health and measures of parenting quality are associated with test performance.

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