The link between poverty and child labor has traditionally been regarded a well established fact.
Recent research, however, has questioned the validity of this link, claiming that poverty is not a
main determinant of child labor. Starting from a premise that child labor is not necessarily
harmful, we analyze the determinants of harmful child labor, viewed as child labor that directly
conflicts with the human capital accumulation of the child in an attempt to identify the most
vulnerable groups, thus possibly enabling appropriate actions to be taken by policy makers. We
reinstate the positive relationship between poverty and child labor, a conjecture that has been
questioned by recent literature. Further, we find evidence of a gender gap in child labor linked to
poverty, since girls as a group as well as across urban, rural and poverty sub-samples consistently
are found to be more likely to engage in harmful child labor than boys. The established gender
gap need not necessarily imply discrimination but rather reflect cultural norms. A further
exploration of this issue seems to be a potentially fruitful avenue for further research. The last
main finding is that there exist structural differences in the processes underlying harmful child
labor in Ghana across gender, across rural/urban location as well as across poverty quintiles of
households.