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Insights into the origins of entrepreneurial activity are gained through a study of alternative mechanisms implicated in the tendency for children of the self-employed to be substantially more likely than other children to enter into self-employment themselves. I use unique life history data to examine the impact of parental self-employment on the transition to self-employment in Denmark and assess the different mechanisms identified in the literature. The results suggest that parental role modeling is an important source of the transmission of self-employment. However, there is little evidence to suggest that children of the self-employed enter self-employment because they have privileged access to their parent's financial or social capital, or because their parents’ self-employment allows them to develop superior entrepreneurial abilities.

In this paper, we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialized countries to investigate the family gap in pay – the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without children. We present results from seven countries: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We find that there is a good deal of variation across our sample countries in the effects of children on women’s employment and in the effects of children on women’s hourly wages even after controlling for differences between women with and without children in characteristics such as age and education. We also find that the variation in the family gap in pay across countries is not primarily due to differential selection into employment or to differences in wage structure across countries. We suggest that future research should examine the impact of family policies such as maternity leave and child care on the family gap in pay.

Using a life course perspective, we develop a theoretical model of how parents can influence their children's propensity to enter self-employment. We draw on the sociological, economic, psychological, and behavioral genetics literatures to develop a model in which parental influence occurs in different ways, depending on someone's stage in their life course. We review and summarize existing findings for parental influences on entrepreneurial entry using a three-part life course framework: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We also analyze new data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics on the extent to which children were involved in their parents’ businesses. From our review, we propose strong effects from genetic inheritances and parenting practice (during childhood); moderate effects from reinforcement of work values and vocational interests (during adolescence); and little influence from financial support but stronger effects from other tangible means of support (during adulthood).

This chapter uses micro data from the Brazilian Pesquisa Nacional Por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) between 1981 and 2002 to ascertain the role that local labor demand – proxied by male adult employment in the area of residence – plays in shaping the work and schooling decisions of children aged 10–15 years. We find that child work is on average procyclical, while school enrollment is essentially unaffected by local labor market conditions: As local labor demand conditions improve, children are more likely to combine work with school and are less likely to be inactive. One exception is young urban boys with older brothers: These children experience a fall in employment when local labor demand is stronger. This result is consistent with older children subsidizing younger siblings’ schooling and play time.

Why is it that in the current period of high unemployment and industrial restructuring, some employers are implementing policies which attempt to make it easier for employees to combine employment, domestic and family responsibilities? It would seem unnecessary in times of economic difficulty and adjustment for employers to accommodate the needs of employees, particularly when unemployment levels are high ‐ in the case of Australia unemployment exceeds 11%. This paradox, however, exists in many western industrialised countries.

An Act to make further provision with respect to restrictions on the employment of persons under the upper limit of school age and to the means of imposing and enforcing such restrictions; and for connected purposes. [23rd May 1973]

Much research has focused on the reasons for child labor. This paper, in examining the experiences of late nineteenth century Australia seeks to ask the alternate research question: “What are the factors that cause managers to desist from the use of child labor during periods of initial industrialization, even where the society is characterized by a youthful demography and low levels of manufacturing productivity?”.

This study measures the incidence of child labor in Queensland, Australia's third largest state, through an examination of the censuses for 1891 and 1901. It then locates the results of this analysis in the nineteenth century Australian peculiar pattern of economic investment.

It is found that industrializing Australia had an extremely low incidence of child labor. This is attributed to the highly capitalized nature of the Australian rural and mining sectors, and the linkages between these sectors and the wider economy. This suggests that counties, or regions, with a highly commercialized primary sector, and with manufacturing establishments with high skill requirements (even if characterized by low productivity), will have a low incidence of child labor.

The most effective policy for reducing the incidence of child labor is to enhance capital investment in the primary sector and enhance the need for workplace skills in the secondary sector.

The International Labor Organisation suggests that there is currently a revival in child labor. This paper suggests that the most effective policies for reducing the incidence of child labor are ones that seek to foster increased levels of capital investment in the primary sector, rather than ones directed towards legal restriction or poverty alleviation.

This chapter is about the value and costs of the work of children – to themselves, their families, and their communities. I present a range of situations in which children in Zimbabwe have to work, placing the employment of children in the broader context of children's work. I point to benefits and harm that can accrue to children from their work, paying attention to how the children themselves perceive it. The vignettes I present illustrate the complexity surrounding the work of children, and the need to understand the contexts in which they work before we try to intervene.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This chapter pulls together the main strands of Child Labour in Global Society, and addresses their implications for the sociological study of children’s lives, schooling and slavery.

In popular and scholarly discourses there is a tendency to emphasize the differences between the social lives of children and those of adults rather than the similarities and continuities; to misrepresent children’s social activities in comparison with those of adults; to rationalize the differential way in which children’s social activities and participation are assessed and rewarded relative to those of adults; and to fortify children’s actual and/or assumed marginal situation in modern society.

There are sociological gains to be had from emphasizing the comparable features and structural links between ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ due especially to the common participation of children and adults in productive labour.

The way in which children’s social activities are differentially assessed and rewarded is reflected in how children are denied full citizenship rights, and so are non-citizens.

In particular, children are denied the right to freely exchange their labour power on the labour market.

While viewing educational labour as forced labour does not sit well with ideas about children and childhood in modern society, doing so is consistent with the element of compulsion in for instance the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Being compulsorily required to perform educational labour is indicative of how in modern societies children are owned and in slavery, not just of the de facto kind, but also of the de jure kind.