Child labour

4 year old Abir sleeps in the workshop, on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, where he and his mother recycle batteries. Many children working in these toxic factories can expect a much reduced life span

Child labour is a huge global problem. It is easy in the developed world to think child labour a problem of the past, but recent news stories have brought the matter back under the spotlight. For example, a Chinese company has been stripped of its licence to make merchandise for the 2008 Beijing Olympic games after admitting that it used child workers.^w1 And the fashion chain Gap has withdrawn children’s clothing from sale because it was alleged to have been made using forced child labour in India.^w2

In 2006 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) published figures on child labour worldwide. They show an encouraging reduction in child labour, especially its worst forms, in many areas of the world, and indicate the end of child labour as being “within reach.”^w3 Child labour poses an obstacle to health and development, and innovative policies are being used to tackle the problem.

The ILO defines child labour as “all economic activities carried out by persons less than 15, regardless of their occupational status, except household work in parents/carers home.”^w4

In more recent years it has been acknowledged that certain forms of child labour are more detrimental to children and should, therefore, be prioritised for intervention. These “worst forms” of child labour are defined by the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, 1999, and are divided into two categories—“hazardous” and “unconditional.” Hazardous work is defined as “work which by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is more likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children.” The unconditional worst forms of child labour are types of work regarded as always being detrimental to children’s welfare and include bonded labour and prostitution.^w5

Why do children work?

According to the ILO’s estimates in 2006 the number of children in work fell by 11% globally in the past four years, and the number of children in hazardous work has decreased by 26%. Although this is encouraging, there are still 218 million child labourers worldwide, 126 million of whom are engaged in hazardous work (^{fig 1}). Of these the ILO estimates that 8.4 million children globally are engaged in the unconditional worst forms of child labour (table).

Fig 1 Child labour and children in hazardous work, 2000 and 2004

The region with the largest number of economically active children is Asia and the Pacific, and the greatest incidence is in sub-Saharan Africa (^{fig 2}). Latin America and the Caribbean are making the greatest progress in tackling child labour. The number of children at work has declined by two thirds in the past four years. The least progress in tackling child labour has been made in sub-Saharan Africa. Children work in a wide range of employment sectors, with most (70%) engaged in agricultural work (^{fig 3}).^w6

Fig 2 Economically active children by region. Percentages in parentheses are activity rate^w3

Fig 3 Economically active children in 26 countries by industry^w6

To formulate policies to reduce child labour it is important to understand why children work. Recent years have seen an increase in knowledge of the determinants of child labour (box 1). Reasons for sending children to work rather than to school can be categorised by incentives that favour work, constraints that compel children to work, or parents or guardians not acting in the child’s best interests.^w7

The incentive to work is determined by the return of work relative to other uses of time, such as attendance at school. Children will work rather than attend school when the economic benefits of working are greater than the expected benefits of schooling. The direct cost of education may be deemed too costly—for example, books, travel, uniform. Or the education may be of low quality.

Even when incentives favour school rather than work, a household may be compelled by poverty constraints to send children to work. The immediate and urgent requirement for children to work is often such that long term benefits accrued from education are seen as distant and meagre, causing families to put children to work for immediate benefit.^w7 Ideally parents could borrow against the future income gained from sending their children to school; however, such instruments are normally not available in poor countries, especially to poorer families, and increased future income is not guaranteed in situations of high unemployment.^w8

Health and development

Throughout the world, occupational injury and mortality rates of children exceed those of adults.^w17 However, few studies have compared the health of working and non-working children in poor countries, and studies that have been conducted do not show striking differences. Bias may be introduced by the “healthy worker effect,” whereby children may be selected to work because they are healthier than their peers or may withdraw from the workforce if ill or injured. Even less evidence shows the effects of child labour on psychosocial wellbeing, and this is important because children are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.^w18

The evidence that does exist shows that the growth and development of children in industry and agriculture are severely compromised. Many case reports describe poisoning; serious skin and other infections; chronic lung disease; cancers; burns; amputations; skeletal deformities; and impairments to hearing, vision, and immune function.^w19

Recent studies in the Middle East showed that children who work in artisan shops were exposed to higher levels of solvents, leading to neurotoxic effects. The long term consequences of such exposure is yet unknown.^w21

Child prostitutes risk pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection, and children in domestic service are often victims of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.^w20

Child labour hinders development. Although the elimination of child labour was not explicitly included in the millennium development goals, the persistence of child labour is a barrier to the achievement of the goals to reduce poverty; to establish universal education; and to create equality between the sexes.

Child labour is an obstacle to the achievement of universal primary education. Attendance at school is generally strongly negatively correlated with child labour (^{fig 4}). Child labour is detrimental to a child’s educational outcome, reducing the ability to earn future capital and perpetuating poverty for poor children from poor families.

Fig 4 School attendance and work participation^w3w23

Efforts to combat child labour are expected to have substantial payoffs in the form of increased future earnings and lower poverty once children become adults. A recent study by the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour concluded that the elimination of child labour and its replacement by universal education would yield an economic benefit of $4.3 trillion (£2.2 trillion; €2.8 trillion) in the next two decades.^w22

Policy solutions?

Until the mid-1990s policy on child labour was dominated by abolitionist approaches, influenced by the ILO’s convention 138, which stated that the minimum age of work should not be below 15 years of age or completion of compulsory schooling. Such an uncompromising abolitionist approach towards child labour fails to recognise the reality of many poor families who depend upon the work of children for survival. Compliance with convention 138 led to the removal of children from working situations in many countries. This caused immediate economic hardship in many cases.

A 13 year old migrant worker from Burma, peels shrimps at a factory in Samut Sakhon, Thailand

In 1992 a proposal by the US senator Tom Harkin to ban the import of any product made by children caused panic in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Thousands of children were dismissed only to seek more hazardous employment.^w24

In recent years the emphasis has since shifted to protecting children from harmful work rather than excluding them from work on grounds of their age, vulnerability, or immaturity. This is reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the ILO convention on the worst forms of child labour (box 2).

International sanctions and consumer boycotts in isolation cannot end child labour. Better knowledge of the determinants of child labour has led to more effective policies being developed to tackle the problem. Possible interventions to tackle child labour are given in box 3.

The most effective policies have been the conditional cash transfer programmes introduced by Latin American countries, which provide money to families if their children attend school a certain percentage of the time, usually about 80%. The design of the Progresa programme in Mexico is particularly innovative. It targets poor rural children who have the highest rates of child labour. The cash transfers are given to mothers because evidence shows that this money is more likely to be invested in children than when given to fathers. The benefit is greater for girls because they have lower rates of enrolment at school and the benefit rises with age as attendance at school drops with increasing age. The programme has been successful in considerably reducing participation in work and increasing attendance at school. The cost of the programme has been estimated at about $1 a day for each participating child.^w25

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the greatest challenge. Because the region has the greatest prevalence of working children and is making the least progress it remains to be seen whether conditional cash transfer programmes can be used in regions with different socioeconomic and cultural attitudes.

What next?

Further studies are needed to determine which forms of work are most harmful to children’s health and wellbeing so they can be targeted for intervention. Although the conditional cash transfer programmes introduced by countries in Latin America have been successful in reducing child labour rates and increasing school attendance, poor countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where child labour rates are the greatest, cannot afford such programmes without international support. Further international effort is needed if we are to eliminate child labour completely.

Competing interests: None declared.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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