Child Labour and the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

Recent ILO global child labour estimates point to important progress in the fight against child labour across most regions. But these figures predate the current global financial crisis. There are fears that that the crisis could slow or even reverse progress in the hardest hit countries. This paper looks at the possible impact of the crisis on child labour and it is divided in three sections. The first section reviews evidence of the impact of past economic crises on child labour. It looks at how and why previous macro-economic shocks have influenced child labour, and helps inform the subsequent discussion of the impact of the current global financial crisis.The second section presents descriptive evidence from four countries (to which Mexico and Pakistan are likely to be added in the final version) of changes in both the level and nature of child labour during the initial years of the global financial crisis. The third section analyses the factors, or combination of factors, that drove child labour trends during the initial crisis period. In the full version of the paper, the section will include econometric evidence from Brazil that exploit the variations over time and space to identify some of the impacts of the crisis on child labor.