Cnild Labors Child Schooling, and Their Interaction with Adult Labor: Empirical Evidence for Peru and Pakistan

association between hours of child labor and poverty, and there is a negative association between child schooling and poverty. Both of these hypotheses are confirmed by the Pakistani data, but not by the Peruvian data. The reduction in poverty rates due to income from children's labor is greater in Pakistan than in Peru. The nature of interac-tion between adult and child labor markets varies with the gender of the child and the adult. In Peru rising men's wages significantly reduce the labor hours of girls, whereas in Pakistan there is a strong complementarity between women's and girls ' labor markets. Both data sets agree on the positive role that increasing adult education can play in improving child welfare. In recent years academics, public officials, and the media have shown a growing interest in child labor. Although the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) estimates of labor force participation rates for children ages 10-14 years show a declining trend (ILO 1996a), in absolute terms the size of the child labor force is and will continue to be large enough to be of serious concern. According to the International Labour Organisation, in 1990 almost 79 million children between 5 and 14 years of age around the world were working full time (see Ashagrie 1993:16). Ashagrie (1993) was the first person to compile an international data set on child labor. His figure on the size of the child labor force (79 million) has since been revised upward to 120 million children (ILO 1996b and Ashagrie 1998). Including part-time workers as well, this estimate rises to 250 million. Although the estimate of the child labor force varies depending on how we define work, how we define a child, and how we collect data, few would disagree that child labor is a problem of gigantic proportions. The universal perception of child labor as a problem stems from the widespread belief that employment is destructive to children's intellectual and physical development, especially that o