Abstract
Do employers substitute adults for children, or do they treat them as complements? Using data from a Mexican schooling experiment, I find that decreasing child farmwork is accompanied by increasing adult labor demand. This increase was not caused by treatment money reaching farm employers: there were no significant increases in harvest prices and quantities, nonlabor inputs, or nonfarm labor supply. Furthermore, coordinated movements in price and quantity can distinguish this increase in demand from changes in supply induced by the treatment’s income effects. Thus, declining child supply caused increasing adult demand: employers substituted adults for children.
- Received November 2011.
- Accepted August 2012.
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- Article
- Abstract
- I. Introduction
- II. Conceptual Framework and Identification Strategy
- III. Data
- IV. Did the Experiment Reduce the Supply of Child Labor?
- V. Was there an Increase in the Demand for Adult Labor?
- VI. Comparison of the Size of the Effects
- VII. Did the Reduction in Child Labor Cause the Increase in the Demand for Adult Labor?
- VIII. Interpretation of Results
- IX. Conclusions
- Footnotes
- References
- Figures & Data
- Info & Metrics
- References
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