The influence of the mother's power on her child's labor in Mexico. Journal of Development Economics

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), approximately 211 million children between 5 and 14 years old were engaged in some type of economic activity in 2000, accounting for almost 18 % of all children in that age group. In order to understand what motivates parents to send their children to work, I apply a collective model of the household to analyze the household’s decision regarding the amount of child labor. Using new data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), I estimate the impact of the mother’s bargaining power on the number of hours her children work. This data allows me to estimate the mothers ’ bargaining power separately from the other parameters of the model. I find that an increase in a mother’s bargaining power is associated with fewer hours of work for her daughters but not for her sons. For the median household, girls ’ workweek would be reduced by up to 16 hours, or by 55%, when the mother’s bargaining power is at its maximum. This implies that policies that target the mother as the recipient of welfare benefits may in fact have an impact on her children’s work, and this impact may be different for boys and girls