History of child labor - Term Paper Example

At the macroeconomic level, the debate explains arguments such as the rural economy, capital and income inequality. While at the microeconomic level, the arguments include the question on necessity of child labor, wealth paradox and parent altruism. Two sections include a comparison of data from personal research and that from other researchers. Looking at the history of child labor at a microeconomic level, child labor has a negative association with the aggregate income of the state. However, microeconomic child labor depends on the total income at the household level.

An article representing research done by Sonia Bhalotra explains a number of arguments based on child labor at a microeconomic level. These arguments include: The study intends to scrutinize the affiliation between household poverty and its impact on child labor. In this case, the situation forces a child to go out there and seek for employment. Furthermore, fewer wages force the child to work for longer hours. This counter s the economic theory, which states that less wages lead to less working hours.

In order to capture the need for child labor, the researcher did an assessment on 2400 Pakistan households in which children worked to get money. The results of the study show that boys work when need arises for family survival. On the other hand, the girls had ambiguous results indicating that girls toiled even when the situation was not critical. The concept could be due to either favoring the boy child or associating girls’ education with low returns. From the observation, it is apparent that at times child labor is not necessary even in poor families (Bhalotra, 2000).

From past studies, most studies aim at establishing the correlation between household income and child labor. However, there is a clear distinction between wealth and income (Mankiw & Taylor, 2011). A family could earn a little money, but they own a large piece of land. Results from research