Cash Transfers and Child Labor

Cash transfer programs are widely used in settings where child labor is prevalent. Although many of these programs are explicitly implemented to improve children's welfare, in theory their impact on child labor is undetermined. This paper systematically reviews the empirical evidence on the imp...

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Main Authors:	de Hoop, Jacobus, Rosati, Furio C.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2016
Subjects:	accounting conditional cash transfer adolescents child labor child health school attendance social protection teenage girls working children
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24189

id	okr-10986-24189
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-241892021-04-23T14:04:20Z Cash Transfers and Child Labor de Hoop, Jacobus Rosati, Furio C. accounting conditional cash transfer adolescents child labor child health child labor school attendance social protection teenage girls working children Cash transfer programs are widely used in settings where child labor is prevalent. Although many of these programs are explicitly implemented to improve children's welfare, in theory their impact on child labor is undetermined. This paper systematically reviews the empirical evidence on the impact of cash transfers, conditional and unconditional, on child labor. We find no evidence that cash transfer interventions increase child labor in practice. On the contrary, there is broad evidence that conditional and unconditional cash transfers lower both children's participation in child labor and their hours worked and that these transfers cushion the effect of economic shocks that may lead households to use child labor as a coping strategy. Boys experience particularly strong decreases in economic activities, whereas girls experience such decreases in household chores. Our findings underline the usefulness of cash transfers as a relatively safe policy instrument to improve child welfare but also point to knowledge gaps, for instance regarding the interplay between cash transfers and other interventions, that should be addressed in future evaluations to provide detailed policy advice. 2016-05-03T19:38:53Z 2016-05-03T19:38:53Z 2014-08-05 Journal Article World Bank Research Observer 1564-6971 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24189 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	accounting conditional cash transfer adolescents child labor child health child labor school attendance social protection teenage girls working children
spellingShingle	accounting conditional cash transfer adolescents child labor child health child labor school attendance social protection teenage girls working children de Hoop, Jacobus Rosati, Furio C. Cash Transfers and Child Labor
description	Cash transfer programs are widely used in settings where child labor is prevalent. Although many of these programs are explicitly implemented to improve children's welfare, in theory their impact on child labor is undetermined. This paper systematically reviews the empirical evidence on the impact of cash transfers, conditional and unconditional, on child labor. We find no evidence that cash transfer interventions increase child labor in practice. On the contrary, there is broad evidence that conditional and unconditional cash transfers lower both children's participation in child labor and their hours worked and that these transfers cushion the effect of economic shocks that may lead households to use child labor as a coping strategy. Boys experience particularly strong decreases in economic activities, whereas girls experience such decreases in household chores. Our findings underline the usefulness of cash transfers as a relatively safe policy instrument to improve child welfare but also point to knowledge gaps, for instance regarding the interplay between cash transfers and other interventions, that should be addressed in future evaluations to provide detailed policy advice.
format	Journal Article
author	de Hoop, Jacobus Rosati, Furio C.
author_facet	de Hoop, Jacobus Rosati, Furio C.
author_sort	de Hoop, Jacobus
title	Cash Transfers and Child Labor
title_short	Cash Transfers and Child Labor
title_full	Cash Transfers and Child Labor
title_fullStr	Cash Transfers and Child Labor
title_full_unstemmed	Cash Transfers and Child Labor
title_sort	cash transfers and child labor
publisher	Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2016
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24189
_version_	1764455881917857792

Cash Transfers and Child Labor

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