Child labor and the education of a society
We examine economic growth, inequality and education when the wellspring of growth is the formation of human capital through a combination of the quality of child-rearing and formal schooling. The existence of multiple steady states is established, including a poverty trap, wherein children work ful...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) Book/Monograph Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Bonn
IZA
2001
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| Series: | Discussion paper series / Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit
338 |
| In: |
Discussion paper series (338)
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
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| Author Notes: | Clive Bell; Hans Gersbach |
| Summary: | We examine economic growth, inequality and education when the wellspring of growth is the formation of human capital through a combination of the quality of child-rearing and formal schooling. The existence of multiple steady states is established, including a poverty trap, wherein children work full-time and no human capital accumulation takes place, with continuous growth at an asymptotically steady rate as an alternative. We show that a society can escape from the poverty trap into a condition of continuous growth through a program of taxes and transfers. Temporary inequality is a necessary condition to escape in finite time, but long-run inequalities are avoidable provided sufficiently heavy, but temporary taxes can be imposed on the better-off. Programs aiming simply at high attendance rates in the present can be strongly non-optimal. |
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