According to the International Labor Organization, at least 160 million children ages 5 to 17 around the world were involved in some form of child labor at the beginning of 2020, including 79 million children performing hazardous labor. This article uses recent representative data from Bangladesh and Pakistan to investigate the relationship…

In the past two decades, Bangladesh experienced a substantial reduction in the prevalence of child labour, associated with improvements in school enrolment and completion. Despite progress, child labour persists in the country, also driven by household earning losses and school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This report addresses a timely…

This paper asks whether education is a viable route to better livelihoods and social inclusion for children living in poor urban areas in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It uses qualitative interviews with 36 students aged 11-16, living in slum and middle-class areas, and also draws on data from a larger, mixed-methods study to provide context. Many children…

This study estimates the returns to boys' education for rural Bangladeshi households by accounting for some conventionally neglected items: direct costs of education, foregone child labour earnings, and option value. The estimated returns are 13.5% for primary education, 7.8% for junior-secondary education, 12.9% for higher-secondary education,…

This paper examines whether children sent to work in rural Bangladesh are caught in a "poverty trap," with the extra income from child labor coming at the expense of the children's longer-term prospects of escaping poverty through education. The poverty trap argument depends on children's work being substitutable for schooling. Casual…