Birth Order, Child Labor, and School Attendance in Brazil

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of birth order on the child labor incidence and school attendance of Brazilian children. Evidence from the psychology and sociology literature suggests that earlier-born children tend to have higher innate abilities. The economic implications of these findings are that earlier-born children may have more intra -household resources directed to them when they are young, and better outcomes as adults in areas such as education and earnings. However, in the context of child labor, the effects of birth order can be confounded by the fact that earlier born children are able to command higher wages than their younger siblings. Also, in the presence of capital constraints, poor families may not be able to afford to send their earlier born children to school, but may be able to send their later-born children due to the income earned by their older siblings. This paper presents both a theoretical discussion and an empirical investigation of the relationship between birth order and child labor. The results from the empirical investigation show that, in fact, male firstborn children are less likely to attend school than their later born siblings and that male last-born children are less likely to work as child laborers than their earlier born siblings. For female children, first-borns are less likely to go to school than their later born counterparts. These findings are intriguing as they run counter to the received wisdom of the effects of birth order, but make sense when considering the child labor decision of poor families in the face of capital constraints.(JEL classification numbers: J20, O12, O54)

Know Your Place: Ethiopian Children’s Contributions to the Household Economy

“…In this regard, our paper builds on studies by Emerson and Souza (2008), Edmonds (2006) and Ejrnaes and Portner (2004), the few exceptions to this. Research in other areas has focused on children's outcomes as a function of birth order, or the intra-household allocation of resources -see for example, Behrman and Taubman (1986) and Behrman (1988), and the consensus tends to be that there are significant birthorder effects that tend to favour older children.…”

“…In this case, households with credit constraints may send older children to work. In their analysis of Brazilian data, Emerson and Souza (2008) note the implication of this for earlier-born children: they may in fact receive less schooling than their younger siblings. Their empirical findings on birth order and gender show that the oldest (especially first-born) children in the Brazilian dataset have to work longer hours.…”

A Study on Child Labour as a Form of Child Abuse in Malaysia

“…Details on this result were presented in Table IV below. that it is the mother"s education that has the greatest effect using data from rural India. Interestingly, both [11] and [12] find that the father"s education has a larger effect on the labour force participation of sons than of daughters, indicating a gender aspect to the decision to send children to school or to work. Similarly, this research found that the educational level of the majority of the parents" of working children were in secondary level and this basically represent low family income which require the children to work as to support the family members.…”

“…Base on past studies, the background of children that basically relate to their gender, parents" educational level, and income have much influenced them to involve into working environment. For example, [11] find that it is the father"s education that has the greatest impact using data from Brazil, whereas [12] find The other issue faced by the working children was in terms of food and treatment. In this regards, the research found that at least 67 children have experienced this issues.…”

“…In the Population Census of 1980 it was cited that the number of children between the ages of 10 to 14 years in the work force was 43,000 [11]. The number declined to 39,746 children in the 1991 Population Census [5].…”