9/7/2021 CHILD LABOURWhat is child labour? Why does the child labour still exist? Why is it an important issue? Child labour isn’t always easy to define unlike other terms. Why? It is because child labour does not have a clear boundary on what it includes and what it does not. Though, of course, it is a clear violation of human/children’s rights for sure. Some argue that child labour include only those who work at the market/industry whereas others also include household work as well. However, in fact, the majority of the child labour are employed by their parents to work in the farms/agricultural sectors than by external bodies to work in manufacturing sectors. Therefore, different research papers and/or countries may define this term slightly differently from one another. Yet, if it were to give one definition, one of the most official definitions could be the one stated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). It says “work that deprives children (any person under 18) of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and/or mental development <...> and interferes with their schooling” (ILO). Surprisingly, there are still many countries where children exist till now. There is a negative correlation between child labour and national income, meaning that as the lower the national income of a country is, the higher the child labour is. However, this doesn’t mean that they have a causality effect. According to the child labour theory, it says households are an economic agent which tries to maximise its utility, that is the households’ present and future welfare, just like other economic agents like firms and government. Hence, each individual household’s definition of maximised utility is very important here and this is related to the value that a household gives to each factor of their welfare. For example, one’s standard of maximised utility would differ based on how much value they give to educating their children and making their children work respectively as well as to what extent they consider the two as substitutes for each other. Furthermore, the theory suggests that like poverty trap, child labour may also be shapd as a vicious cycle, signifying that the child labour may cause intergenerational poverty. This is because, labouring at a young age exposes children to low skill and hazardous jobs and limits their educational opportunities to learn high skills. This further leads to lack of employment opportunities when they become an adult since they have not gained high-quality skills. It may also limit the work available to low skilled and low income jobs because some positions require a particular degree and skills. Due to these challenges, once they get into the old age phase of the life cycle, they may not be able to heavily rely on pensions or other forms of social protection since they might not have invested and saved their income for the future. Such a lack of social protection may raise their vulnerability to economic and social shocks in the economy and increase reliance on extended families with many children. However, with low income, it would be hard to invest in all the children and provide equally high quality opportunities to each of them and that is when child labour is passed on to their next generation as well. This cycle gives rise to one key word, POVERTY. The initial cause of the cycle could have been the poverty which has further made the household to be trapped in the vicious cycle, causing an even greater intergenerational poverty. Therefore, it could be described as a positive feedback loop where one change is amplified by different processes in the system. Supporting the relationship of child labour and poverty as suggested by the theory, empirical data published in the report of the ILO does indeed suggest that the poorer the household, the more common the child labour is. For example, some low-income countries (LICs) like Sudan, Congo, Bolivia, etc. had high numbers of child laborers. However, of course, the child labour exists even in non-poor households as well and poverty is not the sole cause of the child labour since there are many other influential factors. In this week’s writing, we have looked into the basics of the child labour thoery and how it links to the poverty. In some of our future articles, we shall cover determinants of child labour supply and the government and social policies in response to minimise the child labour for economic devleopment since child labour often hidners the development of a country by creating the aforementioned vicious cycle. Bibliography
“Child Labour”. Marginal Revolution university. 18 August 2015. Video. 07 September 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAjwX6ufGq4&list=RDCMUCnkEhPBMZcEO0QGu51fDFDg&start_radio=1&rv=DAjwX6ufGq4&t=329 “World Report On Child Labour, Economic Vulnerability, Social Protection and the Fight Against Child Labour”. International Labour Organisation (ILO). pdf. 16 September 2021. Drusilla K. Brown, Alan V. Deardroff, and Robert M. Stern. “The Determinants of Child Labour: Theory and Evidence”. School of Public Policy, The University of Michigan, Discussion Paper No. 486. September 2002. pdf. 16 September 2021. http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/rsie/workingpapers/Papers476-500/r486.pdf Eric V. Edmonds. “Child Labour in South Asia”. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper No. 5. 20 May 2003. pdf. 16 September 2021. https://www.oecd.org/employment/emp/2955776.pdf “Child Labour”. ILO. pdf. 16 September 2021. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---ilo-yangon/documents/publication/wcms_531953.pdf Comments are closed.
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