Bans on Child Labor

Only a heartless libertarian could possibly object to bans on child labor, right? After all, no one wants to live in some Dickensian dystopia in which children toil endlessly under brutal conditions.


Unless, of course, bans harm, rather than help, both children and their families. And in a new working paper, economists Prashant Bharadwaj (UCSD), Leah Lakdawala (Michigan State), and Nicholas Li (Toronto), find just that. They

… examine the consequences of India’s landmark legislation against child labor, the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986. … [and] show that child wages decrease and child labor increases after the ban. These results are consistent with a theoretical model … in which families use child labor to reach subsistence constraints and where child wages decrease in response to bans, leading poor families to utilize more child labor. The increase in child labor comes at the expense of reduced school enrollment.

And it gets worse. The authors

… also examine the effects of the ban at the household level. Using linked consumption and expenditure data, [they] find that along various margins of household expenditure, consumption, calorie intake and asset holdings, households are worse off after the ban.

Good intentions are just that; intentions, not results. The law of unintended consequences should never be ignored.