Long run effects on household poverty through human capital Although parents may act rationally by sending their children to work in order to increase their probability of survival, they may not perceive the long run negative implications of child labour for their own family. Since child labour competes with school attendance and proficiency, children sent to work do not accumulate (or under-accumulate) human capital, missing the opportunity to enhance their productivity and future earnings capacity. This lowers the wage of their future families, and increases the probability of their offspring being sent to work. In this way poverty and child labour is passed on from generation to generation. The literature on the relationship between child labour and human capital accumulation is relatively large. Many authors have described it (such as Anker and Melkas, 1996: 5, Duraisamy, 1997: 809 and Bachman, 2000b), have introduced it in theoretical models (such as Basu, 1999 or Baland and Robinson, 2000), or have provided empirical evidence (such as Psacharopoulos, 1997; Sharma and Sharma, 1997; Akabayashi and Psacharopoulos.