Macroeconomic Implications of Child Labor Laws and Marital Sorting

本研究项目的目标是发展一种微观经济理论，以解释限制父母在子女教育和劳动力供应方面决定的法律的普遍存在。基本的想法是，这样的法律使父母能够承诺为他们的孩子提供更高水平的教育，因为在没有这样的法律的情况下，贫穷的父母可能会对额外的消费过于不耐烦。从长远来看，这一理论可以作为研究经济不平等与经济增长之间关系的原型，也可以作为采取强制性社会政策（如义务全日制教育）的积极模型。该项目的当前阶段包括开发和测试童工限制的静态模型，并利用非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲的家庭调查数据，探索该模型的一些政策影响。这项工作将导致一个长期项目的发展建议，以我们基于静态模型的研究结果为基础，发展童工的动态平衡分析。

The objectives of this research project are to develop a microeconomic theory that explains the prevalence of laws that restrict parental decisions regarding the education and labor supply of their children. The basic idea is that such laws enable parents to commit to a higher level of education for their children, because in the absence of such laws, poor parents may be too impatient for additional consumption. In the longer run, this theory may serve as a prototype for investigations concerning the -relation between economic inequality and growth, as well as a positive model of the adoption of coercive social policies such as compulsory full-time education.The current stage of the project consists of developing anal testing a static model of child -labor restrictions, anal exploring some of the policy implications of the model, using household survey data from Africa, Asia and Latin America. This work will lead to the development of a proposal for a longer-term project to develop a dynamic equilibrium analysis of child labor on the basis of our findings from the research based on the static model.