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... This fertility differential approximates the fertility differential between mothers in the lowest and highest income quintiles in countries with widespread child labor, such as Brazil or Mexico (see =-=Kremer and Chen 2002-=-). The choice for λ implies that adults on average live for 6 2 3 periods. Assuming that a model period corresponds to six years, people survive 40 years on average after becoming adults. The probabil...

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...ound 1910. This implies a final value for α of 0.65. Notice that in the new steady state with CLR there is a higher supply of skilled labor, so that α has to be higher 16 The skill-premium data, from =-=Williamson 1985-=-, is computed as the ratio of the wages in twelve skilled and six unskilled professions, weighted by employment shares. This data source is criticized by Feinstein (1988), who presents alternative est...

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...d labor implies that a large family with working children derives about a quarter of family income from children, which is in line with evidence from Britain in the period of early industrialization (=-=Horrell and Humphries 1995-=-) and recent data from developing countries. The elasticity parameter σ = 0.5 sets the elasticity of substitution half way between the Cobb-Douglas and the linear production technology. The weight α o...

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...n children were working: “For an adult male operative whose entire family worked in the mill, factory legislation would reduce family income. Such operatives tended to oppose child labor laws” (Clark =-=Nardinelli, 1990-=-, p. 142). Our emphasis on the attitudes of unskilled workers is motivated by the observation that, in Britain as well as the United States, the trade union movement played a key role in lobbying for ...

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...ting rights of the poor in the nineteenth century, unions were able to achieve improvements in labor legislation in favor of their members (such as shorter working hours, safety regulations etc., see =-=Marimon and Zilibotti 2000-=-) through other actions such as strikes or public campaigns. Therefore, we find it reasonable to focus on the preferences of the working class. An alternative, complementary argument is that CLR may h...

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...ve constraint on child labor was the introduction of compulsory schooling in 1880. Compulsion was effectively enforced: in the 1880s, close to 100,000 cases of truancy were prosecuted every year (see =-=Cunningham 1996-=-), which made truancy the second-most popular offense in terms of cases brought before the courts (drunkenness being the first). The total fertility rate (see Figure 11) peaked around 1820, then start...

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...brium without CLR. Ac2cording to our theory, the political support for CLR rises over time if technological change increases the return to education or eliminates specialized tasks for children (see =-=Kirby 1999-=-). In an economy where all children of unskilled parents initially work, a progressive increase in the return to schooling will eventually induce some of the newly formed families to have fewer childr...

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...3. Inequality trends were also similar across Western countries in the nineteenth century. (See Williamson, 1985, on Britain; Williamson and Peter H. Lindert, 1980, on the United States; and Simon Y. =-=Brenner et al., 1991-=-, on Belgium, Germany, and Sweden.) 28 According to Angus Maddison (1995), in 1890, GDP per capita in Italy was only 40 percent as high as in the United Kingdom, and lower than GDP per capita in the U...

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...eth century. Opponents of a child labor bill discussed by the state legislature of Georgia in 1900 argued that the “danger to the child was not in work, but in idleness which led to vice and crime.” (=-=Davidson 1939-=-, p. 77). The bill was defeated. 2 In Britain, the first regulation of the employment of children was introduced in 1833, but it was limited to the textile industry. A series of Factory Acts extended ...

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...n addition, working children undertheageoftwelvewerealsorequiredtoattend school. The law applied only to firms with at least 20 workers however, and no effective provisions for enforcement were made (=-=Weissbach 1989-=-). In 1874, a law was passed that applied to all firms, set the minimum age to twelve, with minimum 25related to changes in the fertility behavior than to structural characteristics of these economie...