Abstract
•Examines how minimum wage affects child labor in India using newly-created dataset.•India has high variation in minimum wage rates across jobs, states, and time.•Uses a fixed effects linear probability model to identify minimum wage effects.•Higher minimum wages reduce children's household work except for boys in rural areas.•Minimum wage does not affect children employed outside the home as paid workers.
This study examines how changes in the minimum wage affect child labor in India. The analysis uses repeated cross sections of India's NSSO employment data from 1983 to 2008 merged with data on state-level minimum wage rates. Theoretically, the impact of the minimum wage on child work could go either way, so empirical evidence from a country with high rates of child labor and a myriad of minimum wage laws across states and industries helps to lessen the ambiguity. Results indicate that regardless of gender, in urban areas, a higher minimum wage reduces child labor in household work. In rural areas a similar result applies for girls while household labor does rise for boys. The minimum wage has virtually no impact on child work outside of the home across urban and rural areas.
