TY  - JOUR
AU  - Edmonds,Eric V.
AU  - Schady,Norbert
TI  - Poverty Alleviation and Child Labor
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15345
PY  - 2009
Y2  - September 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15345
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15345.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric V. Edmonds
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH  03755
Tel: 603/646-2944
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: Eric.V.Edmonds@Dartmouth.edu

Norbert Schady
The World Bank
1818 H. Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
E-Mail: nschady@worldbank.org
AB  - How important are subsistence concerns in a family’s decision to send a child to work? We consider this question in Ecuador, where poor families are selected at random to receive a cash transfer that is equivalent to 7 percent of monthly expenditures. Winning the cash transfer lottery is associated with a decline in work for pay away from the child's home. The cash transfer is greater than the rise in schooling costs that comes with the end of primary school, but it is less than 20 percent of the income paid to child laborers in the labor market. Despite being less than foregone earnings, poor families seem to use the lottery award to delay the child's entry into paid employment and protect the child's schooling status. Schooling expenditures rise with the lottery, but total expenditures in the household decline relative to the control population because of foregone child labor earnings.
ER  -