Child Labour in American Imports

Abstract

Child labour has been the focus of research since the Industrial Revolution, but few provide an econometric examination of the relationship between imports and child labour. This paper fills this gap by presenting a probit model and testing for American imports in 1990 from a broad group of 92 countries. Regression results of various versions of our basic model reveal that the equations are all highly significant and predict at least 80% of the observations correctly, that the signs are generally as expected, and the variables are significant at the accepted level in most cases. We fail to find support for the perception that US imports significantly increase the likelihood of a child labour problem abroad. The paper also recommends directions for future research in this area.