'Protection through Proof of Age - Birth Registration and Child Labor in Early 20th Century USA' by Sonja Fagernäs
notes that -
A birth certificate establishes a child's legal identity and is the sole official proof of a child's age. However, quantitative estimates on the economic significance of birth registration are lacking. Birth registration laws were enacted by the majority of U.S. states in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Controlling for state of birth and cohort effects, the differential timing of birth registration laws across US states is used to identify whether birth registration changed the effectiveness of child labor legislation between 1910 and 1930. The incidence of child labor declined significantly in the early 20th century. The study finds that if a birth registration law had been enacted by the time a child was born, the effectiveness of minimum working age legislation in prohibiting under-aged employment more than doubled. This effect was stronger for children residing in non-agricultural areas.
Fagernäs comments that -
For any law with an age requirement to fulfill its purpose, credible formal proof of age is required. Whether or not this exists, depends on whether the birth of the individual was officially registered, and whether a certificate exists, or can be requested from an official file. According to Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) "A child shall be registered immediately after birth ...". In most developed countries today, the registration of births is taken for granted. However, in many developing countries, the births of a significant proportion of children go unregistered. Birth certificates establish a person's legal identity and function as official proof of age (see e.g. Todres, 2003). According to a report by UNICEF (2005), without a birth certificate, children are unlikely to hold formal proof of age, and cannot necessarily be considered legally under-aged for certain activities, such as marriage, work, or prosecution. In several countries, access to health care and education can be denied without a birth certificate. Birth registration generates accurate figures on the population and is therefore also considered important for the planning of economic and social policies. Despite the potential significance of birth registration from an economic and welfare perspective, the study of birth registration has been neglected by economists. There is little existing statistical evidence on the economic significance of birth registration. Quantitative estimates are missing on the extent to which the lack of a birth certificate, or legal identity, constrains the economic and social opportunities of an individual, denies individuals of their legal rights, or how the lack of birth registration might inhibit social and economic planning at a national level.
In order to understand more about the potential economic significance of birth registration, this study takes a historical approach. It focuses on the early 20th century when state-level birth registration was gaining prominence in the United States, and where the timing of the enactment of registration laws varied across states. At this point in time, if births were registered, this generally happened early in the child’s life. Whether a child had a birth certificate depended on whether there were mandatory laws on birth registration, procedures for registration and filing of records, and whether uniform birth certificates were provided.
The question addressed is whether minimum working age legislation is more effective in combating under-aged employment when birth certificates are available as proof of age. This question is also relevant to today's developing world, where according to UNICEF estimates for 2010, one in six children aged between 5-14 are engaged in child labor3. At a more general level, this is a study on the importance of birth registration as an institution for the enforcement of any law that specifies a minimum age.
She concludes -
This study has analyzed the role of state birth registration laws in the effectiveness of minimum working age legislation between 1910 and 1930. It relies on individual-level census data pooled across three census years. The timing of the enactment of birth registration laws varied across U.S. states. Over the time period studied, the coverage of these laws varied not just across states, but also within states depending on the child's age, or birth cohort.
Identification of the legal effects relies on an econometric framework that controls for state of birth, age, birth cohort and survey year effects. Additionally state-specific cohort trends are included. Therefore, the models can control for any state-level and cohort-specific characteristics that might correlate with the timing of the birth registration laws. A simple state-level regression analysis on the correlates of the birth registration laws suggests that “pre-enactment” trends in core socioeconomic variables are mostly not associated with the timing. The economic effects of birth registration have received little interest, especially in the form of statistical evaluation. The results show that state-level laws on birth registration improved the effectiveness of child labor laws in reducing the incidence of child employment in early 20th century USA. Full birth registration coverage was not reached immediately after the laws were enacted. However, the existence of these laws made birth registration mandatory and resulted in uniform procedures for recording births. Copies of birth certificates were filed centrally, and birth certificates could be demanded as proof of age for work permits, or to verify the age of working children. Indeed, there was a connection between whether a state had enacted a state birth registration law and whether it required documentary proof for issuing work permits to children by 1907.
The results show that between 1910 and 1930, minimum working age laws reduced employment of 12-15-year old children by approximately 5 percentage points. With a few exceptions, the results indicate that birth registration laws did not have a common effect on the employment of all children, or affect the employment of the work-eligible. Their main effect was to enhance the effectiveness of minimum working age legislation in prohibiting under-aged employment. The likely explanation is the improved ability to deny work permits from the under-aged. On aggregate, between 1910 and 1930, children below the minimum age were over 8 percentage points less likely to work than work-eligible children when they had been born with a birth registration law in place. When they had been born prior to a birth registration law, under-aged children were only 3-4 percentage points less likely to work than work-eligible children. Birth registration improved the enforcement of minimum working age legislation with respect to underaged employment. The effect of birth registration laws was stronger in 1910 and 1920. The incorporation of birth registration as an additional dimension might explain why some previous studies on child labor laws in the USA have not confirmed a relationship with child employment, or found a weak relationship.
A further investigation suggests that the impact that birth registration laws had on the effectiveness of minimum age legislation was larger in counties, where the majority of individuals worked outside agriculture. In such states, working children were also much more likely to engage in nonagricultural activities, where work permits were required. This supports the conclusion that the channel of effect was the use of birth certificates to ascertain a child's true age in the process of granting, and verifying work permits. The minimum working age limit did not affect the employment of black children, and birth registration did not enhance the effectiveness of the minimum working age legislation for black children. This is a historical study, but the findings are relevant for today's world as well at a general level. Birth registration rates are low in many developing countries and in several the enactment of birth registration laws has been a recent phenomenon (see e.g. Cody, 2009 for some specific examples).
Although there may be a birth registration law in place, its enforcement has often been poor with limited access to registration services and a lack of resources. Child labor is still prominent in developing countries. Similarly to the USA in early 20th century, a large share of this employment is agricultural, on family farms. However, a share of children also work for a salary in manufacturing or services, and this varies by country.
Child labor laws are evidently only one factor that reduced child employment. However, the results of this study imply that minimum age legislation is more likely to be effective when a functioning birth registration system is in place. This study has focused on child labor, but it suggests that there is reason to belief that age limits in other areas, such as the right to marry, or school entry, might function more effectively with strong birth registration systems. These are questions for further study.
