It would be nice if the kids were grateful for us looking after them. This isn’t just about improving family relations in the here and now; ideally, they’d be so grateful that they’d be happy to look after us when the incontinence starts to kick in.
An interesting new paper considers that thought pattern in the context of child labour in developing countries.
This is largely a story about farming, with 70% of child labour happening in agriculture. The authors note that evidence doesn’t show the clear pattern we might expect of rising incomes leading to a fall in child labour.
In Pakistan and Ghana, research shows land-rich families using more child labour than land-poor ones, while in the coffee-growing regions of Brazil higher incomes have led to more children working.
Why might this be? The authors suggest it’s partly because decisions about whether children should work are shaped by the interaction between the need for money today (encouraging child labour) and desire for care in old age (discouraging it). To look after us later requires children to feel gratitude that, shockingly, may not materialise if their childhood included hard labour.
The authors suggest the relationship between a parent’s wage and the intensity of child labour is U-shaped: parents with low wages need their child to work, those on middle incomes don’t put their children to work (they can afford not to and want gratitude/care in old age) while high-earning parents are fine for them to work (they don’t need support in old age).
I think the big lesson is we should think twice about getting the kids to wash up if we want them to wash us in future.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
