The debate on child labour has focused mainly on developing countries.However, child labour also persists in some developed countries. Portugal is an example of a country where child labour is still a matter of concern as about 8-12 percent of Portuguese children aged 6-15 may be classified as workers. This paper studies the patterns of child labour in Portugal and assesses the consequences of working on the educational performance of Portuguese children. In particular, we draw a distinction between domestic and economic child work and examine the effect of these two types of labour on school success.a An intermediate step in our analysis is an assessment of the factors that determine the duration of work and the probability of succeeding in school. Our analysis reveals that the two types of labour have asymmetric effects. While economic work hinders educational success, domestic work does not appear to be harmful. We also find that, after controlling for a host of relevant socio-economic variables, factors such as a child's interest in school and educational ambitions appear to have a direct and large effect on boosting educational success and reducing economic work.JEL Codes: J23, J24, O15
Historical accounts of the evolution of child labor are limited to the United States and to the core European economies. The experience of countries outside the prosperous European core has rarely been investigated. This paper draws on data from censii, labor force, and household surveys and qualitative information such as the testimonies of various stakeholders and news articles to provide an analysis of the evolution of child labor in Portugal. The Portuguese experience is set against the backdrop of the country's economic structure and economic growth, demographic changes, educational expansion and schooling, and labor legislation. Our assessment suggests that the long-run evolution of child labor in Portugal was determined mainly by the needs of the economic structure of the country and it was the progressive adoption of skill-biased technologies that pushed children away from work. While the passage of compulsory schooling and minimum working-age laws may have provided additional impetus, they were not the main drivers as changes in these laws tended to follow declines in child labor.
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