Are Children and Parents Substitutes or Complements in the Family Labor Supply Decision in Bangladesh?

This research uses logistic regression to determine whether a parent (father or mother) and a child are substitutes or complements in the family labor supply decision in Bangladesh. We look separately at models for children's market work and children's household work. For market work, we test our models for eight demographic groups of children, namely, younger and older, rural and urban, boys and girls. Our results show that for market work, fathers and children may be substitutes or complements in supplying labor, whereas mothers and children are complements for all groups of children. Our study of household work pertains to girls only, because boys do not engage in household work in sufficient numbers for analysis. We find almost no connections between parents' market work and daughters' household work status.