Parental migration, paid child labour, and human capital

Abstract

Purpose Households suffering from poverty often rely on parental migration and/or paid child labour for survival. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of parental migration on paid child labour and human capital formation in a dynamic context, explicitly taking the effects of parental migration on child’s school and home education into account. Design/methodology/approach The author utilises a mathematical method. In particular, an overlapping-generations model is built, with agents who have a two-period life. The amount of paid child labour is determined as a solution of the utility maximisation problem. Findings Contrary to intuition, parental migration possibilities do not necessarily reduce paid child labour. In addition, parental migration possibilities do not necessarily raise human capital. Moreover, a trade-off might exist between alleviating paid child labour and raising human capital under parental migration possibilities. Research limitations/implications Migration possibilities are given exogenously evenly among potential migrants by the foreign country. However, in general, they depend on potential migrants’ human capital so that migration possibilities differ across agents. Practical implications Migration is usually considered effective in alleviating poverty. However, since it does not necessarily reduce paid child labour and raise human capital, migration should be regulated in some cases as a means to escape from poverty. Originality/value This paper deals with parental migration and paid child labour in an identical dynamic model. This paper assumes that human capital is built not only by school education but also home education, the amount of which changes with the duration of parental migration.