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Philip Hanser's avatar

These results are counterintuitive except for agrarian economies where child labor is a significant input to production. Generally, children are an inferior good; that is, family size decreases as income rises. This looks like a statistical artifact. Are the data and statistical analyses available to the public?

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Maxwell Tabarrok's avatar

I think all the data should be publicly accessible, but unfortunately I couldn't find any replication files so it'd be a slog recreating everything from the original sources.

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Philip Hanser's avatar

I was afraid of that. Almost all economics journals I am familiar with have a replicability requirement. That translates into making all data available that isn't proprietary or under some form of nondisclosure agreement. I doubt any data used in this study falls into either of these categories. Do you know if there is a contact available?

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Lyman Stone's avatar

FWIW I concur it’s fairly weak evidence.

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