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Impact Evaluation of Child Labour Reduction Policies
Alessandro Cigno, Furio C. Rosati ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This book chapter reviews what is known about the impact of policies and programmes that aim to reduce child labour. It covers legislation, conditional and unconditional transfers, public works, microcredit and livelihood programmes, and other interventions. The authors say that sound impact evaluations are scarce, so the evidence is not settled. Overall, the results do not show clear success. Effects on child labour are mostly small and often short-lived, and some policies increased child labour.
Key points
- The chapter reviews legislation, conditional and unconditional transfers, public works, microcredit, livelihood programmes and other interventions.
- Sound impact evaluations of child labour policies are not abundant, so the jury is still out.
- In most cases the effects on child labour are small and often short-lived.
- In several cases policies had unwanted consequences that increased child labour.
- Policies often did not give enough consideration to the complex incentives that shape household decisions about children's time.
Limitations
Only the abstract is available, so it gives no country details, numbers, or specific studies and no way to tell which interventions did better or worse. It is a review across many interventions rather than a single intervention evaluation, so no single evidence record is given.
Abstract
Abstract This chapter is devoted to a review of the impact of different policies and programmes actually implemented to address child labour with a bearing on child labour. It looks at legislation, transfers (both conditional and unconditional), public works, microcredit and livelihood programmes, and other forms of intervention. While the jury is still out, as sound impact evaluations are not so abundant, the results are far from showing an outright success. In the majority of cases the effects on child labour are small and often short-lived. In several cases the policies generate unwanted consequences that actually lead to an increase in child labour. Apparently the policies implemented often did not give enough consideration to the complex set of incentives that determine the decisions of the household relative to the allocation of children’s time.