Seminar «The Income Elasticity of Child Labour: Do Cash Transfers Have an Impact on the Poorest Children?»

On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 18:10 Laboratory for Labour Market Studies and Centre for Labour Market Studies will hold the joint research seminar.

Speaker: Furio C. Rosati, Professor of Public Finance at the University of Tor Vergata, Research Fellow at IZA.

Theme: The Income Elasticity of Child Labour: Do Cash Transfers Have an Impact on the Poorest Children

The possible non linearity of the income elasticity of child labour has been at the centre of the debate regarding both its causes and the policy instruments to address it. We contribute to this debate providing theoretical and empirical novel results. From a theoretical point of view, for any given transfer size, there is a critical level of household income below which an increase in income has no impact on child labour and education. We estimate the causal impact of an increase in income on child labour and education exploiting the random allocation of the Child Grant Programme, an unconditional cash transfer, in Lesotho. We show that the poorest households do not increase investment in children’s human capital, while relatively less poor households reduce child labour and increase education. In policy terms, the results indicate that while targeting remains essential, some form of means testing of the transfer is necessary to improve their effectiveness towards the most destitute children.

Working language is English.

Location: room 5309, 26 Shabolovka str., campus building 5.

If you don't have HSE pass please send email with your Name and Surname to Lilia Gubajdullina ( lgubajdullina@hse.ru ) no later than December, 10, 12:00.