Increased Child Labor Research Articles

Market Access and Child Labour: Survey Evidence from Rural Uganda

The study analyses the relationship between access to rural product markets and the extent and nature of child labour. It is built on the view that if physical markets can shape rural development through, for instance, influencing prices, household production decisions and employment, the associated activity growth could increase child labour. Using household survey data from Uganda, I find that children increase time in domestic work when local product markets are distant, while their time in economic activity declines. A similar pattern is observed for the incidence of child labour. The likelihood of child labour in domestic activity increases for each extra hour of travel to the market, while child labour in economic activity declines. This could reflect the possibility that households may switch child work from market-oriented activities to domestic work when they are remotely located from markets. Results confirm findings from earlier cross-country studies that access to product markets may be detrimental to children. Second, they demonstrate that the effect of the markets varies, depending on the age of children, as well as the nature of the work they engage in.

Market Imperfections and Child Labor

Summary This article looks into the relationship between market imperfections and child labor. A rural household model shows that households with medium-sized plots may increase child labor when the labor market improves, contrary to the others. We estimate the relationship between child labor and various measures of market imperfections in Madagascar, controlling for a large set of village characteristics and district fixed effects. On average, market imperfections increase child labor but the effects are heterogenous by land ownership (and consistent with the model). An improvement of markets is associated to a decrease in child labor, which is suggestive of new policies to fight against child labor.

Does International Migration Increase Child Labor?

Global international migration may in‡uence child labor through a labor mar- ket eect. We empirically investigate this issue by using an original cross-country survey dataset, which combines information on international emigration ‡ows with detailed individual-level data on child labor at age 5-15 in a wide range of developing countries. By using variation in the emigration supply shocks across labor market units de…ned on the basis of both geography and skill, we estimate a set of child labor equations where the variable of interest is the interactive eect between parental skill and country-level emigration shocks. We measure the latter through dierent indicators including a direct measure of the relative skill compostion of emigrants relative to the resident population in the country of origin. Overall, after controlling for a large set of individual-level characteristics, remittances, and country …xed eects, our …ndings are consistent with predic- tions and show that international out-migration may signi…cantly reduce child labor in disadvantaged households through changes in the local labor market.

Does International Migration Increase Child Labor?

Global international migration may infl‡uence child labor through a labor market effect. We empirically investigate this issue by using an original cross-country survey dataset, which combines information on international emigration ‡flows with detailed individual-level data on child labor at age 5-15 in a wide range of developing countries. By using variation in the emigration supply shocks across labor market units defi ned on the basis of both geography and skill, we estimate a set of child labor equations where the variable of interest is the interactive e¤ect between parental skill and country-level emigration shocks. We measure the latter through different indicators including a direct measure of the relative skill composition of emigrants relative to the resident population in the country of origin. Overall, after controlling for a large set of individual-level characteristics, remittances, and country fi xed effects, our findings are consistent with predictions and show that international out-migration may signifi cantly reduce child labor in disadvantaged households through changes in the local labor market.

CHILD LABOR AND SCHOOLING RESPONSES TO ACCESS TO MICROCREDIT IN RURAL BANGLADESH

Microcredit has been shown to be effective in reducing poverty in many developing countries. However, less is known about its effect on human capital formation. In this article, we examine the impact of access to microcredit on children's education and child labor using a new and large data set from rural Bangladesh. The results show that household participation in a microcredit program may increase child labor and reduce school enrollment. The adverse effects are more pronounced for girls than boys. Younger children are more adversely affected than their older siblings and the children of poorer and less educated households are affected most adversely. Our findings remain robust to different specifications and methods, and when corrected for various sources of selection bias. (JEL H43, I21, J13, J24, L30, O12)

Economic Crisis and Children

The global economic downturn is impacting countries in East Asia and the Pacific, threatening to reverse progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially with regards to children’s health, education, and overall development. Of concern are potential adverse affects on children vis-a-vis poor health indicators, lower educational attainment, increased child labor, and reduced family incomes. How governments respond is vital to ensuring that the crisis does not lead to long-term consequences for children and vulnerable populations. Badly designed policies or those that are slow to materialize can be destabilizing and detrimental to the populations they aim to protect. Social safety nets and increased expenditures for social services, particularly in health and education, are important for protecting the poor. UNICEF, along with other UN agencies, is working with governments to monitor the impacts of the crisis and to harmonize and implement pro-poor social policies that protect vulnerable populations from current and future crises. La crise économique et les enfants: une vue d’ensemble pour l’Asie de l’Est et le Pacifique. Le ralentissement économique global est en train d’avoir un impact sur les pays dans l’Asie de l’Est et le Pacifique, et menace à renverser le progrès qui a été fait envers les objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement, surtout en ce qui concerne la santé des enfants, l’éducation et le développement en général. Il existe une préoccupation qu’il y aura des effets négatifs pour les enfants vis-à-vis des indicateurs de santé inférieurs, de l’acquisition éducative plus basse, des niveaux élevés du travail des enfants, et des revenus réduits parmi les familles. La façon dans laquelle les gouvernements répondent est essentielle pour assurer que la crise ne mène pas à des conséquences à long terme pour les enfants et les populations vulnérables. Les politiques mal conçues, ou celles qui tardent à se former, peuvent être déstabilisantes et nuisibles aux populations qu’elles aspirent à protéger. Les filets sociaux de sécurité et l’augmentation des dépenses sociales pour les services sociaux, surtout dans la santé et l’éducation, sont importants pour protéger les pauvres. L’UNICEF, avec des autres agences de l’ONU, travaille avec des gouvernements pour observer les impacts de la crise et pour harmoniser et exécuter des politiques sociales en faveur des pauvres, qui protègent les populations vulnérables des crises actuelles et futures. La crisis económica y los niños: una visión general para el Asia del Este y el Pacífico La recesión económica global está teniendo un impacto en los países de Asia del Este y el Pacífico, amenazando a deshacer los progresos hacia los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio, especialmente respecto a la salud de los niños, la educación y el desarrollo en general. Hay una preocupación que podría haber efectos adversos para los niños frente a los indicadores de salud inferiores, la consecución educacional más baja, el aumento del trabajo infantil, y los ingresos de familia reducidos. La manera en que los gobiernos responden es vital para asegurar que la crisis no causa consecuencias a largo plazo para los niños y las poblaciones vulnerables. Las políticas mal diseñadas, o esas que tardan en formarse, pueden ser desestabilizadoras y perjudiciales a las poblaciones que tratan de proteger. Las redes de seguridad social y el aumento de los gastos sociales para los servicios sociales, sobre todo en las áreas de la salud y la educación, son importantes para proteger a los pobres. La UNICEF, junto con otras agencias de la ONU, está trabajando con los gobiernos para controlar los impactos de la crisis y para armonizar e implementar las políticas sociales en pro de los pobres, que protegen a las poblaciones vulnerables de las crisis actuales y futuras.

Children, Education, Labor, and Land: In The Long Run and Short Run

The paper uses an overlapping generations model to examine the effects of an increase in a household's land ownership on child labor. Consistent with previous studies, it found that small increases in land lead to increased child labor. However, as land continues to increase child labor declines. Further, even when an increase in land ownership causes an immediate rise in child labor, there are contexts where long-run child labor (that is aggregated over progenies) declines. (JEL: O10, D13, E20)

Children’s Work and Mothers’ Work––What is the Connection?

Summary This paper examines the relationship between the employment of children and their mothers, with the aim of informing discussion on efforts to reduce child labor in Brazil. The analysis builds on the largely separate literatures on children’s time use and mothers’ work in two ways—by examining characteristics of employment which are often not available in survey data, and by modeling both children’s work and mothers’ employment. The results suggest that the relationship between children’s and mothers’ work is complex, with substantial evidence of positive correlation. The findings are consistent with the argument that anti-poverty programs that target women’s employment could result in increased child labor. This possibility warrants further analysis in order to better inform policy regarding child labor.

Child Rights Impact Assessment of Proposed Electricity Price Increases in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In 2006–07, UNICEF and Save the Children UK in Bosnia and Herzegovina supported government and non-governmental organizations to develop and pilot a Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) to assess the potential impact of electricity sector reform on children. The CRIA exposed the negative impact of potential electricity price increases on children's access to health, education and social protection. Household strategies to respond to price increases would also negatively affect children's health, increase child labor, reduce children's access to information and increase girls' and women's workload. The pilot study proposed child rights indicators for monitoring and reinforced the need for mitigation measures. This article outlines the CRIA approach and results and discusses the potential role of CRIA as a tool to assist governments to assess compliance with child rights obligations during policy development and implementation.

Lucky Last? Intra-Sibling Allocation of Child Labor

Abstract This paper has two objectives. First, we construct a theoretical model which explains the empirical evidence that in developing countries, first-born children are more likely to be child laborers than later-born. Second, we explore the long-run consequences of child labor regulations within our framework. In our model, credit-constrained parents use the labor income from their first-born child to fund the schooling of later-born children. In the presence of such intra-sibling effects, child labor laws which decrease work opportunities for children may backfire, increasing child labor and reducing human capital in the long run.

Mortality risks, education and child labor

In this paper, we investigate the role of young adult mortality on child labor and educational decisions. We argue that mortality risks are a major source of risks in returns to education in developing countries. We show that, in the absence of appropriate insurance mechanisms, the level of child labor is inefficient, but it can be too high or too low. It is too high when parents are not very altruistic and anticipate positive transfers from their children in the future. Uncertain returns to education, endogenous mortality or imperfect capital markets unambiguously increase child labor. When the level of child labor is inefficiently high, we also show that a cash transfer conditional on child's schooling can always restore efficiency regarding child labor.

School enrollment among urban non-slum, slum and rural children in Kenya: Is the urban advantage eroding?

For long now, the urban child has been considered to be more likely than his/her rural counterpart in being able to realize the dream of fully participating in school. This observation has mainly been attributed to what is commonly known as the “urban advantage”. This “urban advantage” is associated with increased access to facilities such as schools in urban areas. Recent work documenting population health in urban and rural areas has however begun to suggest that some sections of the urban population do not benefit from the “urban advantage”. For example, a child in the slums of Nairobi is more likely to suffer from diarrhea than a child in rural Kenya. In addition, a child from the richest household in the slums is more likely to suffer from diarrhea than a child from the poorest family in rural Kenya. This paper explores patterns of school enrollment comparing urban slum, urban non-slum and rural children. The paper uses data from the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) for 1993, 1998 and 2003. A contrast with school enrollment in Nairobi slums is done using the KDHS-type Nairobi Cross Sectional Slum Survey for 2000. Data from focus group discussions collected in the slums of Nairobi provide the context for discussion. The results suggest that school enrollment is higher in urban non-slum than in urban slum areas, and is higher in slums than in rural areas at younger ages. However, this is only true up to age 9 for females and 11 for males, from which school enrollment for slum children declines and the rate of decline is faster than among their rural counterparts. The corresponding ages at which the enrollment among the rural children begins to visibly decline are 13 years for males and 14 years for females. Factors contributing to these results point to the poor quality of primary schools in slums, limited access to secondary school for slum children, increased vulnerability to coercion into sexual activity and other ills that hinder school participation, disabling environment at home and increased child labor.

The effect of trade liberalization on child labor

The question of how trade liberalization affects the employment of children in developing economies is at the core of the debate on globalization. Trade theory predicts that an increase in the price of an exported good could either increase or decrease child labor depending on the magnitudes of the substitution and income effects. In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the relative price of an exported commodity and child labor using household-level data from within a poor country. In particular, we relate child labor to regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice surrounding national and international rice market integration in Vietnam. We find that higher rice prices are associated with declines in child labor. Income effects play an important role in this relationship. Rice price increases are associated with the largest declines in child labor in households that are large net producers of rice. These findings show that greater market integration can be associated with less child labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of punitive trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labor is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.

Does Globalization Increase Child Labor?

There is no empirical evidence that trade exposure per se increases child labor. As trade theory and household economics lead us to expect, the crosscountry evidence seems to indicate that trade reduces or, at worst, has no significant effect on child labor. Consistently with the theory, a comparatively well-educated labor force, and active social policies, appear to be conducive to a reduction in child labor. For countries with a largely uneducated workforce, the problem is not so much globalization, as not being allowed to take part in it.

Will trade sanctions reduce child labour?: The role of credit markets

We examine the interaction between credit markets, trade sanctions and the incidence of child labour in a two-good, two-period model with unequally wealthy households. Both poverty and poor education quality, inter alia, are important determinants of child labour. The incidence of child labour decreases as we move from the case of borrowing constraints to the case in which poor households can borrow freely from rich ones and then to the case of perfect international credit markets. Trade sanctions can increase child labour, especially among poor households, a possibility that decreases as their access to credit improves.

Why Children do not Go to School in PakistanSome Estimates and a Theoretical Framework

Pakistan has a grave problem of human capital. The majority of our children tend not to go to school. Instead they go to work. Policy on education and child labour has been clearly deficient in Pakistan. This policy failure, we feel is due to analytical deficiency in understanding the determinants and impact of children's schooling and labour. The theoretical framework of this study is based on five arguments. 1. Schooling, and child labour, are two aspects of the the same problem, the problem of why children do not go to school. Schooling and child labour are both the result of one decision-making process, whether to send a child to school, or to work. 2. Mainstream literature on Pakistan does not consider the impact of this household decision-making about children's schooling and labour on the aggregate labour market. 3. Mainstream literature on Pakistan further does not consider the impact of child labour on the labour market for women. 4. Mainstream literature also does not consider yet another impact of household decision-making about children's schooling and labour on fertility behaviour. ·5. These three processes, household decision-making about children, the impact on the labour market, and the impact on fertility, combine to give a perverse signalling mechanism that tends to depress children's schooling, increase child labour, depress adult employment especially for women, and increase fertility rates. So policy failure in Pakistan, may in large part be due to the inability to understand these three processes, and their combination in a perverse signalling mechanism.

Children’s Labor Force Participation in the World System

In developing countries today children play significant economic roles. Field studies show that children in many developing countries are economically active in both rural and urban settings. This cross-national study investigates the economic roles of children in contemporary developing and developed countries. Dependency theory guides hypotheses that a less developed country’s dependence on the more developed core countries (measured by multinational corporation penetration and commodity concentration) serves to create a labor market within the less developed country where children are economically active. Additional hypotheses regarding the influence of female labor force participation on increased child labor and urban growth on increased child labor are also tested. Regression analyses, based on demographic data from 70 developed and developing countries, reveal that dependency variables (multi-national corporation penetration and commodity concentration) are not positively related to children’s labor force participation. Urban growth and female labor force participation however, are positively related to children’s labor force participation. These results suggest an important link between women’s roles and the roles of children and the influence of urbanization on children. The utility of dependency theory to the understanding of children’s labor force activity is also challenged.