Webbink Ellen, Smits Jeroen, de Jong Eelke
Institute of Management Research, Nijmegen Center for Economics, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9108, 6500 HK Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Soc Indic Res. 2013 Jan;110(2):819-836. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9960-0. Epub 2011 Nov 18.
We develop a new theoretical framework that explains the engagement in child labor of children in developing countries. This framework distinguishes three levels (household, district and nation) and three groups of explanatory variables: Resources, Structure and Culture. Each of the three groups refers to another strand of the literature; economics, sociology and anthropology. The framework is tested by applying multilevel analysis on data for 239,120 children living in 221 districts of 18 developing countries. This approach allows us to simultaneously investigate effects of household and context factors. At the household level, we find that resources and structural characteristics influence child labor, whereas cultural characteristics have no effect. With regard to context factors, we find that children work more in rural areas, especially if there are more unskilled manual jobs, and in more traditional urban areas. In more developed regions, girls tend to work significantly less.
我们构建了一个新的理论框架，用以解释发展中国家儿童从事童工劳动的情况。该框架区分了三个层次（家庭、地区和国家）以及三组解释变量：资源、结构和文化。这三组变量分别对应另一类文献：经济学、社会学和人类学。通过对18个发展中国家221个地区的239,120名儿童的数据进行多层次分析，对该框架进行了检验。这种方法使我们能够同时研究家庭因素和背景因素的影响。在家庭层面，我们发现资源和结构特征会影响童工劳动，而文化特征则没有影响。关于背景因素，我们发现儿童在农村地区工作更多，特别是在非技术体力工作较多的地方，以及在更传统的城市地区。在更发达的地区，女孩工作的可能性显著更低。
