usually, the head of household provides the information on child labor. The advantages of using proxy-based reports rather than child-based reports in the context of child labor are not clear. On the one hand, child-reported information may be more accurate than proxy responses, given that a child knows best how she allocates her time. On the other hand, the head of household may be familiar with the children’s activities since many child laborers in developing countries work on the family farm or enterprise, however, due to social normal and cultural values, a proxy respondent may tend to underreport these activities (Dammert and Galdo 2013).

In order to understand the effects of survey design, experimental studies have randomized the survey instrument to different households in Tanzania and Ethiopia (Dillon et al. 2012; Dammert, et al. 2016). Both studies show that survey design matters for child labor outcomes, in particular in contexts where a large share of children are working on the family farm or home enterprises and respondents may provide the socially desirable response of not sending their children to work. These results have important implications for the reliability of current household survey instruments and published estimates of child labor for monitoring and guiding efforts towards child labor elimination. More attention needs to go to the survey instrument when we measure child labor. An area that deserves attention concerns the worst forms of child labor, which are rarely considered in rigorous empirical research.

# **_2.2 Theoretical Framework_**

In this section, we present a heuristic explanation to illustrate the different mechanisms through which policies may have an impact on child labor. This discussion draws on the theoretical framework presented in Cigno and Rosati (2005) and Edmonds (2008). Economic theory largely focuses on child labor as labor supply. Consider a unitary household in which parents maximize utility over current consumption, children’s education, and leisure. The parent's labor supply is inelastic and yields an exogenous income, fertility is exogenous and fixed at one child, and school participation is dichotomous (the child either attends school or not). Thus, the income constraint faced by the household is composed of household income (adult income and income from child labor) minus the direct schooling costs. Parents will invest in the child’s schooling up to the point where the marginal costs of a child’s time in school (including foregone earnings from work) equal the marginal benefits.

Within this simplified framework, several factors influence children’s time allocation. First, optimal investment in child education may not be achieved in credit-constrained households, since these households cannot borrow against future earnings to cover foregone earnings or school related expenses. Poor, credit constrained households are more likely to resort to child labor to meet subsistence needs, even if parents have preferences for schooling (Baland and Robinson 2000; Basu and Van, 1998: Beegle, Dehejia and Gatti 2009; Ranjan 2001). These households are particularly likely to rely on children for income generation in the face of uncertainty. There is ample evidence that poor households often resort to child labor as a buffer against negative shocks such as parental unemployment and loss of agricultural income due to droughts or other natural disasters (Edmonds 2005; Beegle, Dehejia and Gatti 2006; Duryea et al 2007; Guarcello, Mealli and Rosati 2010).

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