Essays on household behavior: Survival, child labor, migration

Economists have been working on different aspects of economic survival for a long time. But economic survival has never been the center of economic analysis in mainstream economics. After recent involvement by several economists, survival of an agent gained significant importance in economic analysis. In this dissertation, our objective is to join this tradition through two essays.;The first essay addresses on child labor. Following Basu and Van (1998), we analyze impacts of policy measures, particularly minimum wage legislation, in eradicating child labor. In order to do so, we consider an economy with two sectors---formal and informal. Our conclusions are: (i) if there is a formal and an informal sector in the economy, and if the minimum wage is higher than the high-wage equilibrium, then the imposition of minimum wage may eliminate child labor; and (ii) if there is a formal and an informal sector, and the minimum wage is between the wage levels at the high-wage and the subsistence level, then the imposition of a minimum wage may not eliminate child labor.;The second essay addresses individual migration and return migration as a family decision. This is an extension of the model by Bhattacharya (1991; 1996). At the survival level, individual migration could be a family utility maximizing decision rather than an individual utility maximizing decision. In this essay, we find conflicting decisions between a family member and a family regarding migration, return migration, onward migration, stay with local search and stay without local search of the member.