Conventional wisdom sees education as a primary vehicle through which all people can graduate out of poverty. Education as an instrument of societal change is capable of facilitating a wide range of human rights. However, in many developing countries the education gap seems to be growing within schools in urban, rural and remote areas. The key…

We introduce a simple empirical model that assumes a positive stigma (or norm) towards child labor that is common in some developing countries. We then illustrate our positive stigma model using data from Guatemala. Controlling for several child- and household-level characteristics, we use two instruments for measuring stigma: a child's indigenous…