Determinants of Child Labour in Indian States: Some Empirical Explorations (19612–1991)

This paper attempts to examine the phenomenon of child labour in India by conducting a preliminary search for the factors which affect demand and supply of child labour. The incidence of child labour is firstly examined with respect to the socio economie characteristics including dernographic, educational and economie poverty variables. Factor analysis is then conducted to identify patterns of these variables with the incidence of child labour for Indian states using Census data. These possible relationships are formally modelled in an overlapping generations framework which derives two postulated models. The models are estimated using Kmenta’s pooled method which combines variations due to time and state specific factors. These results clearly indicate the presence of vicious and virtuous spirals consisting of the above factors for different states. The supply factors appear to dominate and their roles require further indepth examination

     

Environmental justice and enforcement of the safe drinking water act: The Arizona arsenic experience

Environmental justice is concerned with the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. A wide variety of empirical studies have concluded that disparate-impact discrimination does in fact exist since minority and low-income communities are at disproportionate risk for environmental harm. In this paper we examine these issues in the context of enforcing the safe drinking water act (SDWA). Specifically, we focus on the association between race, income, and hazardous levels of arsenic concentration and analyze the broad equity implications of implementing the new arsenic regulation by examining the relationship between community-level exposure to arsenic and socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the population in Arizona. The results provide no support for the contention that continued selective implementation and enforcement of the revised SDWA arsenic standard is likely to disadvantage minority or low-income groups disproportionately in Arizona.