More than 20 percent of the world’s children work. Agriculture is the largest employer of working
children, and most child laborers work on farms their families own. This paper shows that the
relationship between use of children as laborers and land holding is nuanced. Child labor generally
decreases as per capita land holding increases, but there is a persistent upward bump in the
relationship between child labor and landholding near the middle of the range of land per capita. This
pattern is repeated in three surveys conducted in Zimbabwe, in 2001, 2007-8 and 2010-11. The bump
can be explained theoretically by the relationship between the marginal productivity of a child worker
on the farm and the marginal value placed on his/her education, at different levels of wealth.