Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART ONE Raising Kids in the Age of Inequality -- CHAPTER ONE The Economics of Parenting Style -- CHAPTER TWO The Rise of Helicopter Parents -- CHAPTER THREE Parenting Styles around the Contemporary World -- CHAPTER FOUR Inequality, Parenting Style, and Parenting Traps -- PART TWO Raising Kids throughout History -- CHAPTER FIVE From Stick to Carrot: The Demise of Authoritarian Parenting -- CHAPTER SIX Boys versus Girls: The Transformation of Gender Roles -- CHAPTER SEVEN Fertility and Child Labor: From Large to Small Families -- CHAPTER EIGHT Parenting and Class: Aristocratic versus Middle-Class Values -- PART THREE How Policy Affects the Way We Raise Our Kids -- CHAPTER NINE The Organization of the School System -- CHAPTER TEN The Future of Parenting -- Notes -- Index

In recent years, a number of governments and consumer groups in rich countries have tried to discourage the use of child labor in poor countries through measures such as product boycotts and the imposition of international labor standards. The purported objective of such measures is to reduce the incidence of child labor in developing countries and thereby improve children's welfare. In this paper, we examine the effects of such policies from a political-economy perspective. We show that these types of international action on child labor tend to lower domestic political support within developing countries for banning child labor. Hence, international labor standards and product boycotts may delay the ultimate eradication of child labor.

Child labor is a persistent phenomenon in many developing countries. In recent years, support has been growing among rich-country governments and consumer groups for the use of trade policies, such as product boycotts and the imposition of international labor standards, to reduce child labor in poor countries. In this paper, we discuss research on the long-run implications of such policies. In particular, we demonstrate that such measures may have the unintended side effect of lowering domestic support for banning child labor within developing countries, and thus may contribute to the persistence of the child-labor problem.

The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order whereby the landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values between a hard-working and thrifty middle class and an upper class imbued with disdain for work. We propose an economic theory of preference formation in which both the divergence of attitudes across social classes and the ensuing reversal of economic fortunes are equilibrium outcomes. In our theory, parents shape their children's preferences in response to economic incentives. If financial markets are imperfect, this results in the stratification of society along occupational lines. Middle-class families in occupations that require effort, skill, and experience develop patience and work ethic, whereas upper-class families relying on rental income cultivate a refined taste for leisure. These class-specific attitudes, which are rooted in the nature of pre-industrial professions, become key determinants of success once industrialization transforms the economic landscape.

We develop a positive theory of the adoption of child labor laws. Workers who compete with children in the labor market support a child labor ban, unless their own working children provide a large fraction of family income. Fertility decisions lock agents into specific political preferences, and multiple steady states can arise. The introduction of child labor laws can be triggered by skill-biased technological change, which induces parents to choose smaller families. The theory can account for the observation that, in Britain, regulations were first introduced after a period of rising wage inequality, and coincided with rapid fertility decline.