The Influence of Mothers' Pension Laws on Child Labor in the Early 20th-Century U.S.

• In Event: 1549 - The Reach and Consequences of Social Welfare Policy

Abstract

Between 1910 and 1920, forty U.S. states enacted mothers’ pension laws, which enabled local governments to give needy “deserving” mothers, typically widows, cash aid to support their dependent children. The primary purpose of the grants was to make it possible for poor mothers to raise their children in their own homes rather than surrender them to orphanages or foster care. A secondary purpose, less recognized today but invoked by some Progressive Era social welfare reformers, was to reduce child labor. Research suggests that nineteenth-century child labor laws largely failed to significantly reduce children’s workforce participation (Moehling 1999; Nardinelli 1980, 1990) but the possibility remains that policies that tackled the problem by providing aid—rather than by penalizing work—were more effective. Our study aims to discover whether Progressive Era mothers’ pension programs had any discernible effect on children’s workforce participation at the state, county and individual levels, using a difference-in-difference approach. Preliminary findings indicate that mothers' pensions had no effect on child labor rates at the state level, but they had a significant (though small) effect at the county level. The individual-level analysis is ongoing and results are forthcoming.

Authors

• Elisabeth Anderson, New York University-Abu Dhabi

• Eman Abdelhadi, New York University