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Over history, it seems like people disagree on the monetary value of children. Sometimes people get paid for their children, and sometimes they have to pay. Al
by mruts 8y ago
Over history, it seems like people disagree on the monetary value of children. Sometimes people get paid for their children, and sometimes they have to pay.
Also the standard deviation of prices (in 19th century London and current day Russia) is quite high. My wife’s sister is a professor who studies human trafficking and has quite a bit of data on this sort of thing.
One unsurprising trend is that girls are significantly more value than boys: they can potential do housework, cause less problems, and their sexual access can be monetized.
- Mirioron 8y agoI wonder how much of a role culture plays in this as opposed to economics. We say that the reason kids worked in factories and were sold was due to economic hardship, but most people wouldn't find that acceptable nowadays even when they are going through economic hardship. I guess the reason why we care less about the economic aspect nowadays is that we have enough social services that will at least minimally take care of the kids if necessary.
- Tsubasachan 8y agoActually not so long ago countries like Sri Lanka and Colombia made a lot of money providing "orphans" to couples who wanted children in Europe. Caused quite the scandal.
- belorn 8y agoI would like to see that data. Some nations has even laws where only women can be human traffic victims, which likely has an impact on human traffickers. I could easily imagine that the price they demand is thus higher for girls and women, which then get interpreted as higher value by researchers.
- mruts 8y agoThe dataset she assembled was in Russia, over 100 years or so.
- belorn 8y agoThat would be during the first world war then, during a time where they lost about 2 million men to the war and had forced a total of 12 million men into the military. Would be interesting to know in that context why girls would be valued higher then boys.