Child labour in the context of domestic migration: Evidence from immigrant children in Mexico

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between domestic household migration and child labour in Mexico. The empirical strategy accounts for the endogeneity between these two decisions and the unobservable factors. We estimate marginal effects from a recursive bivariate probit model. Our results show that children of new resident households are more likely to work than children of nonmigrant households. This probability increases with age and is larger for boys than for girls. In addition, our results suggest that child labour is more likely in households in which the father is absent. Finally, evidence shows that new resident children have a higher education level than local children and work longer hours to obtain a salary.