The Demand for Gratitude as a Restraint on the Use of Child Labor: A Hypothesis

Arbeitspapier

We study a parent's demand for gratitude from his child. We view this demand as an intervening variable between the parent's earnings and the incidence of child labor. The demand for gratitude arises from the desire of a parent to receive care and support from his child late in life, while the inclination of the child to provide this support during his adulthood is determined by how the child was treated by his parent during childhood. Specifically, we model the child's gratitude as an inverse function of the intensity of his labor in childhood. We show that when we keep the child's (imputed) wage constant, the intensity of child labor decreases with the parent's earnings. However, when we make the child's (imputed) wage a function of the parent's earnings, then the outcome can be different. With the help of a numerical example, we show that the pattern of child labor related to the parent's earnings can be U-shaped.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15050

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation ; Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving ; Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers ; Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development ; Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
• Subject: gratitude formation ; the parent's demand for care and support late in life ; child labor

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Stark, Oded ; Budzinski, Wiktor
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/250711
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET