Child labor is addressed through the analysis of parental decision-making on behalf of their children. Using an econometric model, this study seeks to determine how gender preferences related to parents’ years of schooling might affect their decisions to send children to work. The results show that a father’s education has a positive and significant effect on reducing the probability of child labor for both male children and female children. A mother’s higher level of education has no significant effect on child labor regardless of the child’s gender. These results suggest that in Ecuador, women might have more limited bargaining power in household structures. On the other hand, they could also reflect a cultural preference of families that see child labor as acceptable.
