History Repeats Itself: Child Labor in Latin America

Child labor occurs on almost every continent in the world. Very few countries seem to escape this exploitative phase as they develop into fully industrialized countries. Child labor began during the eighteenth century in Great Britain and it continues in the twenty-first century in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras. This paper offers an explanation for the persistence of child labor through history. The increase in the employment of children during industrialization is caused by an increase in the supply of children from poor and working-class families and an increase in the demand for child labor by the factory owners. Parents trapped in poverty have no other choice but to send their children off to work to contribute to the family income. Children’s wages, moreover, often make the difference between starvation and survival. Employers are happy to oblige the parents because children are more productive than adults in the new industrial regimen. As the principle of the division of labor has been applied to the production process, unskilled children replace skilled adults in factories, mills, and mines. Children are preferred to adults because they are cheap, submissive, uneducated and nimble. These economic forces are so strong that neither child labor laws nor mandatory schooling legislation are an effective deterrent against employers or families. Since history is repeating itself in the developing world by industrializing on the backs of children, alternative policies are recommend to cut this stage short so that the future generations of Latin America will become educated instead of exploited.

Important Determinants of Child Labor: A Case Study for Lahore

Child labor is a persistent problem both for developing and developed countries. Academic literature holds a household responsible for this phenomenon where poverty, literacy level, and the de facto demography are considered important. A factor model is attempted in this study to investigate dynamics of child labor in a society in terms of these household characteristics. The model reveals that household‐poverty‐driven factors are the most serious while the household demography is the second most serious factor in the dynamics of child labor in Lahore. Shockingly, household literacy does not have any role to play, at least not in Lahore. The results will help policymakers to work in the domain of poverty to mitigate child labor, and also urge them to align societal factors, which shape household demography.     

Unfinished Business: The Persistence of Child Labor in the US

Among historians it has become customary to acknowledge that children have always worked. That is, before industrialization children worked, but their work was not deemed a social problem. With industrialization, however, child labor came to be condemned as morally repugnant, economically foolhardy, and socially destructive. Reform efforts were mobilized and, after protracted struggle, children were effectively dispelled from the mines, mills, and factories. Problem solved-or at least we wished to think so. Unfortunately, the US accommodation with child labor was incomplete, and so, child labor persists in pockets of American society. In recent years there has been a growing recognition that many children work, and do so at very young ages. Not only have children always worked, but they continue to do so today.This essay assesses residual child labor problems in the US today. It asks why, when the US made its accommodation to child labor in mines, mills, and factories, we failed to adequately address child labor in other sectors, thus paving the way for continued problems in agriculture, street trades, sweatshops, and elsewhere in our economy.     

Working Conditions of the Child Worker in Turkish Labour Law

Child labor is one of the most important subjects related to work in Turkey. The children of the poor families feel the necessity to enter the work force. The necessity which stems from the economic hardship forces the child and adolescent workers to accept unhealthy working conditions. Having said that, it would be wrong to assume that the sole purpose of the children workers is to earn a living. Research indicates that another purpose is to learn a profession. There exist regulations that limit the child labor in Turkey. Through these regulations, several occupations are prohibited to be undertaken by child labor and reduction in working hours is enforced. The Labor Code that came into force in 2003 contains important regulations in this regard. The labor Code introduced important responsibilities to employers and unions. Turkey also took part in international agreements and working towards fulfilling her duty as a result of these agreements. Furthermore, Ministry of Labor and Social Security runs several programs tailored for child labor. IPEC Project is the important program among those. These programs involve not only the child labor, but also their families as well. To sum up, Turkey is aware of the fact that child labor is a social and economic problem. As a result, the efforts towards resolving the issue is ongoing and important steps are being taken towards the EU membership.

《劳动合同法》背景下高校劳务用工人员劳动关系分析

随着高等教育大众化和全球化的不断深入发展,高校正式编制的教职工很难满足高校不断发展的用人需要,形成高校内部规模较大的编制外劳务用工队伍。在新劳动合同法背景下,如何正确处理高校劳务用工人员劳动关系,避免用工风险,已经成为高校的当务之急。本文分析了高校人员结构及劳务用工人员劳动关系的现状,指出高校在处理劳务用工人员劳动关系方面应把握的几个重要环节,为建立高校健康和谐的劳动关系提供了合理化建议。     

中国制造业外包对劳动力需求弹性及就业的影响

研究目标：测算中国30省份的生产者责任以及消费者责任CO2排放量;各个省份的净碳转移量以及进出口隐含碳排放;测算省间的碳转出量,计算8大区域的净碳转移量,并分析了碳转移的方向。研究方法：借助投入产出表,用多区域投入产出模型测算各省份各行业的CO2排放量以及省间的碳转移量。研究发现：两种责任测算的CO2排放量差别较大;广东、上海、北京、浙江、江苏的净碳转出量最大,内蒙古、山西、河北、新疆、贵州的净碳转入量最大;东部沿海、南部沿海以及京津地区的净碳转出量最大,西北地区的净碳转入量最大。研究创新：用投入产出表结合能源平衡表测算各省份各行业的直接CO2排放量;研究了省间的碳转移。研究价值：对中国的碳减排具有一定的政策建议。     

Division of Labor in Teams

This paper examines the incentive effects of division of labor on worker effort, in the absence of the scale effects studied by Adam Smith. The game-theoretic model gives two results. (1) Suppose workers are identical and risk-neutral, and there is stochastic observation of group output by the firm offering compensations subject to some worker-participation constraint. Then the firm can arrive at the same first-best outcome with or without division of labor. However, if workers are risk-averse, division of labor can give the firm strictly greater profit. (2) A deepening division of labor magnifies this positive incentive effect; but if workers are heterogeneous, or if there are certain informational imperfections in the production process, this incentive advantage of division of labor could be impaired or even reversed. The first result may help explain the emergence of division of labor in the early stages of industrialization without relying on the Smithian advantages, which are also present in some labor deployment schemes without division of labor. The second result throws light on some recent anecdotal evidence of a shallowing division of labor in some areas of modern manufacturing. These factors affecting the efficiency of division of labor are then further discussed in the light of recent empirical findings on division of labor and team work, such as those in Katzenbach and Smith (1993).     

An Analysis of Kin-Provided Child Care in the Context of Intrafamily ExchangesLinking Components of Family Support for Parents Raising Young Children

Little is known about why parents choose kin-provided child care and less is known about how kin-provided child care is related to other forms of in-kind support from relatives close-at-hand. Previous models of the choice of kin-provided child care assumed that the presence of other forms of in-kind support from relatives nearby was inconsequential to estimating effects of economic and demographic factors on the decision to use kin-provided child care. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Class of 1972, this study shows that this assumption is incorrect because use of kin-provided child care and intrafamily in-kind resource exchanges are interrelated. When the association between use of kin-provided child care and the presence of other family in-kind exchanges is ignored, the study shows that estimated effects for income, the price of child care, and maternal characteristics are underestimated. The findings provide a better understanding of why parents choose kin-provided child care by confirming that this decision is a part of a larger set of parental decisions about involvement in resource exchanges within extended families. My findings support recent child care bills aiming to increase parental choice of child care provider, broaden the definition of a provider to include non-coresident relatives, and expand price subsidies for kin-provided child care.     

我国数字劳动研究:文献综述及展望

在数字经济发展背景下,作为一种新型的劳动方式,数字劳动在我国学术界开始得到关注。国内学术界对数字劳动研究展开了初步的探索性研究,主要就数字劳动的基本含义和形式表现、相关的具体案例分析、价值和资本运作、数字劳动过程问题展开了一定的研究。总体而言,国内学术界对数字劳动研究的数量还不够多,缺乏相应的深度和广度,因此,未来还有很大的研究空间。     

The Labor Movement and the Dilemma of Direct Confrontation

The perennial weakness of the American labor movement can be explained by a single, pervasive dilemma concerning its use of confrontational forms of protest. As its history makes clear, the labor movement cannot survive without resorting to mass picketing, sit-down strikes, and other disorderly tactics which challenge the power of employers but also directly threaten property rights, public authority, and dominant visions of social order. However, the labor movement also cannot endure the political and legal consequences which follow when it does embrace these tactics. In developing this thesis, this essay challenges both the aversion to militancy long typical of mainstream unionism as well as the fervent veneration of militancy by many of labor’s contemporary supporters. Instead, it counsels that the movement’s survival depends less on tactical choices than on workers’ success in challenging the political and legal power of capitalists out of which this dilemma ultimately flows.     

当前建筑劳务企业存在问题的分析

目前,我国建筑劳务制度不尽完善,在资质审批方面存在漏洞,因此只有正视建筑劳务企业存在的问题并有效解决,才能进一步发展与壮大我国建筑劳务企业。     

Child Exemptions or Child Allowances

A bstract Eliminating Child exempitons and replacing them with a European style child allowance program would be an effective and costless antipoverty policy The distributional and poverty reducing effects of three potentral child allowance programs are examined These include a fixed dollar tax credit a dollar tax credit a tax credit that declines with income, and a taxable allowance of the some dollar amount for each child     

管理主义视角下的中国劳动关系构建方向

随着我国社会主义市场经济体制的建立和完善,多种所有制经济的发展,劳动关系日益成为一种重要的经济关系。劳动关系的和谐,稳定对提高企业生产效率,增强企业竞争力起着重要作用。本文试图从管理主义理论来说西方劳动关系理论对中国劳动关系理论建构的借鉴意义。     

Labor force participation

Trends in U.S. female and male labor force participation are outlined, particularly for the post-World War II period. Potential causes of these trends are then discussed, both those that operate on the demand side and those that operate on the supply side of the labor market, along with some discussion of alternative approaches to modeling these employment changes. Effects of these trends and future direction of changes are also considered.     

On the Priority of Labor Over Capital

In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, John Paul II asserts the principle of the priority of labor over capital. The purpose of this article is to examine this principle. The conflict between labor and capital is often noted as an essential part of capitalism. There is a long tradition of assigning more significance to labor than to capital. In fact, the classical economists argued that labor determined the “value” of a good. To understand this conflict, we must first review what is capital and its role in capitalism. We will then look at John Paul II’s assertion of the principle of labor over capital, followed by a review of how economists have understood the relationship between labor and capital. Neoclassical economists dismiss labor and capital as classes, so they believe there is no conflict. We examine one neoclassical economist’s claim of a gap in the principle of the priority of labor over capital by not including finance capital in the analysis. We demonstrate that the Church’s teachings on usury answer the objections raised. We conclude with a review of the implications of the priority of labor over capital.     

CHILD CARE PRICES AND MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT: A META‐ANALYSIS

The literature estimates for labor force participation elasticity with regard to child care prices are extensive and varying. While some estimates imply substantial gains from child care subsidies, others find insignificant effects. To determine the causes of the variance, this paper reviews and analyzes the elasticity sizes using estimates from 36 peer‐reviewed articles and working papers in the literature. We start by reviewing the theoretical and empirical aspects related to participation elasticity with regard to child care costs, paying special attention to sample characteristics, methodological aspects, and macro level factors. We conclude by providing a meta‐regression using control variables based on our review of the literature to explain some of the differences between the estimates. As research builds on and improves the methods and assumptions in prior works, elasticity estimates have become smaller over time. This decline might also be partially explained by changes in labor market characteristics. In countries with high rates of part‐time work and very high or very low rates of female labor force participation, we find elasticity rates to be smaller.     

Labor relations at the shop floor level

The tenacious myth that a free economy and free society impoverish working people undergirds modern government interference in labor markets and legal privilege for adversarial labor unions. Managers are concerned about harmony and productivity at the shop floor level. The opposite characteristics of conflict, disco-ordination and inefficiency are anathema. Most of the union difficulties managers must cope with at the shop floor level stem from a fundamental source, namely the philosophy of collectivism. This paper analyzes the fable of labor's disadvantage, wage determination under personal and impersonal conditions, public policy toward labor contracts and the role of businessmen in making labor markets operate more efficiently.     

民工荒与我国劳动力优势

我国劳动力优势丰富,这使得中国在国际竞争和国际贸易中劳动力的比较优势更加突出,这促成中国成为世界上吸引外资最多的国家。但令人不可思议的是,“民工潮”仿佛一夜之间变成了“民工荒”。于是,有些便认为中国的劳动力优势已经一去不复返了。本人将对所谓的“民工荒”原因进行深入地分析,并得出中国仍然具有劳动力比较优势。     

Disentangling Treatment Effects of Active Labor Market Policies: The Role of Labor Force Status Sequences

This paper estimates treatment effects of two active labor market policies – a training program and a wage subsidy scheme – on participants' employment probabilities. The analysis is based on unique data from the 18th wave of the Polish Labor Force Survey containing detailed and extensive individual labor force status histories. We discuss two variants of an exact covariate matching procedure adapted to the specific nature of the data. Our study confirms and reinforces a point raised in recent research [Heckman, J.J., Smith, J.A. The Pre-programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme: Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies. The Economic Journal 1999; 109; 313-348., Heckman, J.J., Smith, J.A. The Determinants of Participation in a Social Program: Evidence from a Prototypical Job Training Program. Journal of Labor Economics 2004; 22; 243-298.], that pre-treatment labor force status dynamics play a decisive role in determining program participation. We implement a conditional difference-in-differences estimator of treatment effects based on these individual trinomial sequences of pre-treatment labor market status. The estimator employs a “moving window” technique that nicely controls for changes in the macroeconomic environment over time. Our findings suggest that training raises individual employment probability, while wage subsidies display negative treatment effects for participants in the Polish case.     

对我国现行建筑劳务管理的思考与对策

本文以广东地区建筑劳务用工市场为例,分析了国内建筑劳务管理当前的困境与形成原因,探讨了施工企业成立自己的相对稳定的劳务施工队或劳务公司的必要性和可行性。也对政府政策、资金扶持,专业培训机构对劳务人员进行职业技能和安全培训,利用现代化技术提高培训效果,推进组建建筑农民工工会等方面均提出相应的建议。