That’s a good point. At least in the modern world the childcare aspect of school is an economic benefit for parents. It’s worth pointing out that raising younger children was one of the useful jobs older children have historically done.
The article is about historical child labor in the 1800′s, and finds that children cost more than they produced, but they were able to do useful farm work past the age of 7.
He finds that children under 7 reduced the value of farm output, presumably because they reduced their mothers’ economic activities. For each child aged 7 to 12 the family’s output increased by about $16 per year – only 7 percent of the income produced by a typical adult male. Teen-aged females boosted family farm income by only about $22, while teen-aged males boosted income by $58.
It’s unclear to me what the breakdown here is but children “age 15 and under” were a large portion of the manufacturing workforce.
In 1820 children aged 15 and under made up 23 percent of the manufacturing labor force of the industrializing Northeast. They were especially common in textiles, constituting 50 percent of the work force in cotton mills with 16 or more employees, as well as 41 percent of workers in wool mills, and 24 percent in paper mills.
Nobody is saying that not sending kids to school could be not-net-negative economically in some specific cases (eg. when someone is anyway at home not doing much, maybe in farms still nowadays?). Such cases represent a tiny minority of current population, at lest in Europe (and in all rich countries). And, even for these small percentage of cases, not being net negative economically is still far away from dramatically raising the economic cost of raising these kids (even if tuition is zero).
That’s a good point. At least in the modern world the childcare aspect of school is an economic benefit for parents. It’s worth pointing out that raising younger children was one of the useful jobs older children have historically done.
I think this source answers your questions better than I’ve been able to: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-in-the-united-states/
The article is about historical child labor in the 1800′s, and finds that children cost more than they produced, but they were able to do useful farm work past the age of 7.
It’s unclear to me what the breakdown here is but children “age 15 and under” were a large portion of the manufacturing workforce.
Nobody is saying that not sending kids to school could be not-net-negative economically in some specific cases (eg. when someone is anyway at home not doing much, maybe in farms still nowadays?). Such cases represent a tiny minority of current population, at lest in Europe (and in all rich countries). And, even for these small percentage of cases, not being net negative economically is still far away from dramatically raising the economic cost of raising these kids (even if tuition is zero).