Child Labor

Abstract

About 168 million children remain trapped in child labor, some of whom are in paid employment in key emerging economies, and helping to fuel economic recovery and global consumption with cheap labor. The number of children involved in labor is highest in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by Africa and Latin America. Generally, child labor has been characterized as belonging to spaces outside school, and in many cultures, is considered a necessary tool to socialize children and provide needed food or money for the household. Schools cannot be seen as a guarantee against child labor, since double-shift education makes it possible for children to work long days at the same time as they are attending school for a few hours every day. In many cases, other forms of abuse (emotional, sexual and physical) are “integrated” with child labor and child marriage. However, we argue that over-emphasis of the benefits of education may be unwarranted if it does not compensate children and their families for the opportunity costs of schooling. In such cases, children may still have to revert to labor to make up for these opportunity costs, which may lead to worse conditions of labor. Therefore, instead of considering childhood as a sphere removed from the society, it may be useful to consider it as continuous with adulthood, and that the change from education to work is not an abrupt, age-determined shift, but a smooth transition. Instead of creating schools that are far removed from the communities’ lives, it may be better to connect them to the children’s environment, and allow for a school-and-work situation that reflects local necessities. In this way, schooling could be integrated with work and play, and thereby rooted in community traditions. The curriculum’s allocation of time to study, work and play could be dependent on the agricultural seasons of the locality and also on the age of the child.