Africa Research Seminar
Date and Time
"The Impact of Minimum Age of Employment Regulation on Child Labor and Schooling"
Labor laws and regulation are the primary instruments used by many countries to combat child labor. The last 15 years has seen an enormous surge in these laws as international pressure has encouraged low income countries to sign international conventions related to the prohibition of child labor and to pass labor laws consistent with the principles of those conventions. This paper considers the impact of laws that restrict the minimum age of employment on child labor and schooling using data assembled from 62 low and middle income countries. Specifically, we estimate age trends in schooling and work for ages where minimum age laws should bind if the legislation was enforced and compare the projected incidence of schooling and work to what is actually observed at the minimum age of employment. Separately for each country, we compute these estimates of the impact of relaxation of the minimum age restriction under the null of binding constraints. We then correlate these estimates of the impact of the relaxation of minimum age constraints with country characteristics in order to understand the situations in which these laws are enforced. We find little evidence of enforcement of minimum age laws in Sub-Saharan Africa or in low income economies. There appears to be a positive correlation between a country's level of development and the extent to which its minimum age regulations are enforced.
Speaker:
Eric V. Edmonds, Associate Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College. Director, Child Labor Network, Institute for the Study of Labor.