CLS Working Papers, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus
No 01-3:
Revisiting the Link Between Poverty and Child Labor: The Ghanaian Experience
Niels-Hugo Blunch and Dorthe Verner
Abstract: The link between poverty and child labor has traditionally
been regarded a well established fact. Recent research, however, has
questioned the validity of this link, claiming that poverty is not a main
determinant of child labor. Starting from a premise that child labor is
necessarily harmful, we analyze the determinants of harmful child labor,
viewed as child labor that directly conflicts with the human capital
accumulation of the child in an attempt to identify the most vulnerable
groups, thus possibly enabling appropriate actions to be taken by policy
makers. We reinstate the positive relationship between poverty and child
labor, a conjecture that has been questioned by recent litterature.
Further, we find evidence of a gender gap in child labor linked to poverty,
since girls as a group as well as across urban, rural and poverty
sub-samples consistently are found to be more likely to engage in harmful
child labor than boys. The established gender gap need not necessarily
imply discrimination but rather reflect cultural norms. A further
exploration of this issue seems to be a potentially fruitful avenue for
further research. The last main finding is that there exist structural
differences in the processes underlying harmful child labor in Ghana across
gender, across rural/urban location as well as across poverty quintiles of
households
Keywords: Africa; Ghana; Child labor; Human capital accumulation; Poverty; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: I21; J13; J24; O15; (follow links to similar papers)
21 pages, April 1, 2001
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