American Economics Association
AEA Logo


American Economic Review


Search:





AEA Member Login:


Quick Tools:

View Full Text of This Article

Data Availability

Email Link to this Article Export Citation

Sign up for Email Alerts

Follow us on Twitter

Explore:

AER - Previous Issues
 AER - December 2005

JEL Indexes (Members Only)

American Economic Review

Vol. 95, No. 5, December 2005

The Macroeconomics of Child Labor Regulation
Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti

Article Citation
Doepke, Matthias, and Fabrizio Zilibotti. 2005. "The Macroeconomics of Child Labor Regulation." American Economic Review, 95(5): 1492–1524.
DOI:10.1257/000282805775014425

Abstract
We develop a positive theory of the adoption of child labor laws. Workers who compete with children in the labor market support a child labor ban, unless their own working children provide a large fraction of family income. Fertility decisions lock agents into specific political preferences, and multiple steady states can arise. The introduction of child labor laws can be triggered by skill-biased technological change, which induces parents to choose smaller families. The theory can account for the observation that, in Britain, regulations were first introduced after a period of rising wage inequality, and coincided with rapid fertility decline.

Article Full-Text Access
Full-Text Article

Additional Materials
Data Availability

Authors
Doepke, Matthias
Zilibotti, Fabrizio