The relative influence of economic and cultural forces is a key area of debate amongst those exploring the causes of child work, and in wider discourse on household labour deployment. Data from Dhaka slums suggest that household poverty and income stability are important economic determinants of children's work. However, economic forces alone cannot explain child-work deployment. Evidence on the availability of adult household members to replace child contributions, and on gender and age differentials in household labour deployment, point towards the importance of cultural factors. Key cultural determinants of children's work include gender norms, age subordination and the cultural importance of avoiding idleness.Child-work, Economic Determinants, Cultural Determinants, Household Poverty, Income Stability, Bangladesh,

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Social protection is widely considered to have a positive effect on children, including supporting improvements in nutritional, educational and health outcomes. Much less is known, however, about the impact of interventions on children's care. This article considers the impact of a social cash transfer targeted at poor households – Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme – on child well‐being, quality of care and preventing children's separation from their parents as perceived by programme and non‐programme beneficiaries in a context of vulnerability, large households and widespread informal kinship care. Findings suggest that cash transfers can improve both material and non‐material aspects of well‐being and contribute to the quality of care and have the potential to prevent children's separation from their parents. At the same time, not all children appear to benefit equally, with non‐biological children being disadvantaged. The combination of large household sizes with programme design and implementation challenges, including low transfer amounts, a cap on the maximum number of eligible household members and poor sensitization and follow‐up, undermine the positive role that cash transfers can play.

This article examines key debates on intra!household labour deployment using evidence on children|s housework in urban Bangladesh[ It argues that theories that emphasize the economic rationality of household decision making are inadequate for explaining task allocation in Bangladeshi slum households[ Cultural and social forces must be considered when seeking to explain household labour deployment[ In urban Bangladesh\ age and gender hierarchies are of particular relevance[ Such evidence suggests that gaining community acceptance is sometimes prioritized over utility max! imization in household livelihood strategies[

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