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Article: Child labor and the interaction between the quantity and quality of children.
- Article from:
- Southern Economic Journal
- Article date:
- July 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Southern Economic Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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1. Introduction
Just as dogs were raised to hunt for their masters before they were
pets, so in early traditional China children were raised as a source
of income ... (Cheung 1972, p. 641).
Motivated by substantial empirical evidence on the negative correlation between fertility rate and income, Becker and Lewis (1973) formulated the idea that parents obtain utility from both the quality and the quantity of their children. Depending on the elasticity of substitution between quantity and quality of children in parents' utility function, this framework yields the important theoretical implication that individuals may spend more on the quality ...