DEVELOPMENT STUDIES WORKING PAPERS

Global international migration may inuence child labor through a labor mar-ket e¤ect. We empirically investigate this issue by using an original cross-country survey dataset, which combines information on international emigration ows with detailed individual-level data on child labor at age 5-15 in a wide range of developing countries. By using variation in the emigration supply shocks across labor market units de\u85ned on the basis of both geography and skill, we estimate a set of child labor equations where the variable of interest is the interactive e¤ect between parental skill and country-level emigration shocks. We measure the latter through di¤erent indicators including a direct measure of the relative skill compostion of emigrants relative to the resident population in the country of origin. Overall, after controlling for a large set of individual-level characteristics, remittances, and country \u85xed e¤ects, our \u85ndings are consistent with predic-tions and show that international out-migration may signi\u85cantly reduce child labor in disadvantaged households through changes in the local labor market