Edmonds, Eric V. 2005. “Does Child Labor Decline with Improving Economic Status?” Journal of Human Resources 40(1): 77-99.

Between 1993 and 1997, child labor in Vietnam declined by nearly 30 percent while the country’s GDP grew by nearly 9 percent per year on average. Using a simple, nonparametric decomposition, I investigate the relationship between improvements in per capita expenditure and child labor with a panel data set that spans this episode of growth in Vietnam. Improvements in per capita expenditure can explain 80 percent of the decline in child labor that occurs in households whose expenditures improve enough to move out of poverty. This finding suggests a previously undocumented role for economic growth in the amelioration of child labor.

Eric V. Edmonds is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Dartmouth College and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. This article has benefited from the comments and suggestions of an anonymous referee, Amitabh Chandra, Paul Glewwe, Nina Pavcnik, Bruce Sacerdote, Doug Staiger, Carrie Turk, and seminar participants at NEUDC and Dartmouth College. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning October 2005 through September 2008 from Eric Edmonds, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College, 6106 Rockefeller Hall, Hanover, NH 03755 USA, eric.edmonds@dartmouth.edu. The raw data are publicly available from the General Statistical Office, Mr. Nguyen Phong, Department of Social and Environment Statistics, 2 Hoang Van Thu Street, Hanoi, Vietnam <vie95043@undp.org.vn>.