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- Title
CHILD LABOR AND THE EDUCATION OF A SOCIETY.
- Authors
Clive Bell; Hans Gersbach
- Abstract
This paper analyzes policies by means of which a whole society in an initial state of illiteracy and low productivity can raise itself into a condition of continuous growth. Using an overlapping generations model in which human capital is formed through child rearing and formal education, we show that an escape from a poverty trap, in which children work full time and no human capital accumulation takes place, is possible through compulsory education or programs of taxes and transfers. If school attendance is unenforceable, temporary inequality is unavoidable if the society is to escape in finite time, but long-run inequalities are avoidable provided sufficiently heavy, but temporary, taxes can be imposed on the better off. Programs that aim simply at high attendance rates in the present can be strongly nonoptimal.
- Subjects
COMPULSORY education; CHILD labor; EDUCATION &; economics; EDUCATIONAL programs; INCOME inequality; HUMAN capital; CHILD rearing; MACROECONOMICS
- Publication
Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2009, Vol 13, Issue 2, p220
- ISSN
1365-1005
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S1365100508080036