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In this paper, several historical scenarios are compared, each very different to the each other in both institutional and geographical terms. What they have in common is the relative poverty of part of the population. This approach allows combining micro historical analysis (in the Catalan case) with a macro comparative approach in developing countries. Through these micro historical and macro regression analyses we obtain the result that adult women’s skills and real wages are a key factor when we wish to explain the patterns of child labor. While female real wages increased sharply in 19th century Catalonia, we obtain very different results in the case of developing countries. This gender bias is identified as one of the very significant effects of human capital which held by women and helps to explain why in some cases children continue to work and also why some parts of the world continue to be poor according to our regression analysis.