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In this book Clark Nardinelli uses neoclassical economics to examine the role of child labor in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The result is an interesting, if not completely convincing, reinterpretation of the economics of child labor. Nardinelli's approach differs significantly from the conventional view of the role of child labor during British industrialization, which he surveys in chapter 2. According to this view, a shortage of adult males willing to work in factories caused children to become a necessary part of the factory work force. Children were treated harshly in the factories, and their employment kept the wages of adult males too low to support their families, which in turn forced adults to send their children to work in factories. The conventional view concludes that the employment of young children declined after 1835 only because Parliament adopted a series of child labor laws.
Nardinelli maintains that each part of the conventional wisdom is incorrect. In chapter 3 he develops a model of the family economy based on Gary Becker's theory of household production and uses the model to explain the rise and decline of child labor in textile factories. According to Nardinelli, the development of textile factories increased the productivity, and thus the wage rates, of children. The employment of children in factories therefore was "a simple response...