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We collect data on child labor in almost 3,000 Nepali households, and our analysis shows that estimates of child laborprevalence vary from 11.6% to 29% with the definition of child labor used. The variation comes from the number ofhours worked and from which tasks are considered child labor. Furthermore, we use two different surveys during datacollection. In the first, an adult (proxy) reports on the daily activities of each child in the household, and in the second,the children (direct) respond themselves. Proxy and direct responses are less likely to match when the definitionincludes time spent on household chores, which is typically underestimated for girls. We find that proxy reporting ofwhether the child worked in the past week is 5.5 percentage points lower than the direct reporting. Within households,misreporting is significantly more likely for girls than for boys. Across households, however, misreporting is associatedwith child's age, not gender. Furthermore, among girls misreporting is associated with the number of younger childrenat home. Our analysis helps explain why varying measures of child labor used in the literature yield different results.
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