… is from page 357 Carolyn Tuttle’s and Simone A. Wegge’s 2015 paper “Regulating Child Labor: The European Experience,” which is chapter 13 of Institutions, Innovation, and Industrialization: Essays in Economic History and Development (Avner Greif, Lynne Kiesling, and John V.C. Nye, eds., 2015):
Child labor had peaked and begun to decline by the time effective laws were implemented. In Great Britain, employment statistics show that the largest numbers of children were employed in the 1830s, while the first enforceable law was passed in 1847 (the Ten Hours Bill).
DBx: A typical pattern is this: Economic growth and the rising prosperity that it brings cause some long-standing reality to become undesirable. Individuals then act in ways that change this reality for the better. After this improving trend has begun, government steps in with legislation aimed at improving this reality. The improving trend continues. Government takes, and is given, all the credit for changing the reality for the better.
