Abstract
Child labour in India involves the largest number of children in any single country in the world. In 2011, 11.8 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were main workers (those working more than 6 mo) according to the Indian Census. Our estimate of child labour using a combined-data approach is slightly higher than that: 13.2 million (11.4–15.2 million) for ages 5 to 17. There are various opinions on how best to measure the prevalence of child labour. In this study, we use the International Labour Organization (ILO)‘s methodology to define hazardousness and combine it with the most recent United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)‘s time thresholds for economic work and household chores. The specific aims of this study are to estimate the prevalence of child labour in the age group 5 to 17 and to suggest a combined-data approach using Bayesian inference to improve the accuracy of the child labour estimation. This study combines the National Sample Survey on Employment and Unemployment 2011/12 and the India Human Development Survey 2011/12 and compares the result with the reported figures for the incidence of child labour from the Indian Census. Our unique combined-data approach provides a way to improve accuracy, smooth the variations between ages and provide reliable estimates of the scale of child labour in India.
Highlights
India has the largest number of working children of any country in the world, with a Census estimate of 12.66 million children aged from 5 to 14 holding this status in 2001, falling to 4.35 million in 2011
Both Model 1 and Model 2 show a narrow posterior uncertainty, as they assume that the variances are equal to the means
Combining datasets with a Poisson log-normal model provides a reliable figure for child labour in India and incorporates uncertainty in models supported by the use of available observations
Summary
India has the largest number of working children of any country in the world, with a Census estimate of 12.66 million children aged from 5 to 14 holding this status in 2001, falling to 4.35 million in 2011 (according to the Ministry of Labour and Employment n.d.). According to the analysis of ‘child workers’ (ages 5–14), as per the 2011 Census of India, Uttar Pradesh state had the largest number of child workers (2.1 million, 4.1%) and Bihar had the second-largest number (1.1million, 3.9%; Samantroy et al 2017, p.46). Nagaland and Himachal Pradesh have shown the highest proportion of child workers at 13.2% and 10.1% respectively (ibid.). The proportion of child labourers reached 11.8% among children aged 5 to 14 in 2012, as calculated by UNICEF (n.d.), which is roughly 29 million children in total. Unpaid household services (household chores) are ones of the most prevalent types of child labour and could be increasing, but how this work can be adequately measured as child labour is still debatable
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