"This book provides a blend of theory, empirical analysis and policy discussion. The authors develop a comprehensive theory of child labour, and related variables such as fertility, and infant mortality. The effects of trade are considered and country studies are included to illustrate and test different aspects of the theory in different geographical contexts."--BOOK JACKET.
Despite its decline throughout the advanced industrial nations, child labor remains one of the major social, political, and economic concerns of modern history, as witnessed by the many high-profile stories on child labor and sweatshops in the media today. This work considers the issue in three parts. The first section discusses child labor as a social and economic problem in America from an historical and theoretical perspective. The second part presents child labor as National Child Labor Committee investigators found it in major American industries and occupations, including coal mines, cotton textile mills, and sweatshops in the early 1900s. Finally, the concluding section integrates these findings and attempts to apply them to child labor problems in America and the rest of the world today.
This is a unique account of working-class childhood during the British industrial revolution, first published in 2010. Using more than 600 autobiographies written by working men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jane Humphries illuminates working-class childhood in contexts untouched by conventional sources and facilitates estimates of age at starting work, social mobility, the extent of apprenticeship and the duration of schooling. The classic era of industrialisation, 1790–1850, apparently saw an upsurge in child labour. While the memoirs implicate mechanisation and the division of labour in this increase, they also show that fatherlessness and large subsets, common in these turbulent, high-mortality and high-fertility times, often cast children as partners and supports for mothers struggling to hold families together. The book offers unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Its images of suffering, stoicism and occasional childish pleasures put the humanity back into economic history and the trauma back into the industrial revolution.
This book provides new evidence of the theoretical and empirical causes and consequences of child labor. In so doing, the chapters provide a unique set of policy prescriptions that are applicable to both the developing countries that make up the case studies of the volume, as well as other countries more broadly. The volume is constructed to inform policy with rigorous analysis. However, unlike most academic studies, the language and flavour of the volume is largely non-technical, while the policy recommendations are practical. The volume is made up of three sections. The first section builds on the existing literature and provides new theoretical insights into child labor. Section 2 provides empirical evidence from both quantitative and qualitative case studies on child labor from across Asia, Africa and Latin America. This section provides information from studies conducted in Brazil, Cameroon, the Dominican Republic, India and Vietnam. Section 3 provides policy recommendations.
Children have worked for centuries and continue to work. The history of the economic development of Europe and North America includes numerous instances of child labor. Manufacturers in England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Prussia as well as the United States used child labor during the initial stages of industrialization. In addition, child labor prevails currently in many industries in the Third World. This book examines the explanations for child labor in an economic context. A model of the labor market for children is constructed using the new economics of the family framework to derive the supply of child labor and the traditional labor theory of marginal productivity to derive the demand for child labor. The model is placed into a historical context and is used to test the existing supply-and-demand-induced explanations for an increase in child labor during the British Industrial Revolution. Evidence on the extent of childrens employment, their specific tasks and trends in their wages from the textile industry and mining industry is used to support the argument that it was technological innovation which created a demand for child labor. Certain mechanical inventions and process innovations increased the demand for child labor in three ways: increasing number of assistants needed; increasing the substitutability between children and adults, and creating work situations that only children could fill. Specific innovations in the production of textiles and in the extraction of coal, copper and tin are highlighted to show how they favored the use of child workers over adult workers. The book concludes with a look at the current situations in developing countries where child labor is prevalent. Considerable insight is gained on the role of child labor in economic development when this historical model is applied to the contemporary situation.
March 1998 Most children in Côte d'Ivoire perform some kind of work. In rural areas, more than four of five children work, with only a third combining work with schooling. Child labor in Côte d'Ivoire increased in the 1980s because of a severe economic crisis. Two out of three urban children aged 7 to 17 work; half of them also attend school. In rural areas, more than four out of five children work, but only a third of them manage to combine work with schooling. Full-time work is less prevalent, but not negligible. Roughly 7 percent of urban children work full time (an average 46 hours a week). More than a third of rural children work full time (an average of 35 hours a week), with the highest incidence in the Savannah region. The incidence of such full-time work rises with age but is by no means limited to older children. The average age of the full-time child worker in Côte d'Ivoire is 12.7. These children have received an average 1.2 years of schooling. That child is also more likely to be ill or injured and is less likely to receive medical attention than other children. Urban children in the interior cities are far more likely to work and their working hours are much longer. Among rural children, those in the Savannah region (where educational infrastructure lags far behind the rest of the country) are most likely to work. Five factors affect a household's decision to supply child labor: * The age and gender of the child (girls are more likely to work, especially when the head of household is a woman). * The education and employment status of the parents (low parental education is a good targeting variable for interventions). * The availability of within-household employment opportunities. * The household's poverty status. * The household's location (calling for geographical targeting). With improved macroeconomic growth, it is hoped, child labor will decline-but a significant decline could take several generations. Meanwhile, it is important to: * Use a gradual approach toward the elimination of child work by aiming initial interventions at facilitating combined work and schooling. * Support the development of home enterprises as part of poverty alleviation programs, but combine it with incentives for school attendance. * Make school hours and vacation periods flexible (accommodating harvest times) in rural areas. This would also improve children's health. * Improve rural school attendance by having a school in the village rather than 1 to 5 kilometers away. * Improve educational investment in the Savannah. This paper is a product of the Social Development Department. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Child Labor: What Role for Demand-Side Interventions (RPO 680-64). The author may be contacted at [email protected].
Child labour is a serious and contentious issue throughout the developing world and it continues to be a problem whose form and very meaning shifts with social, geographical, economic and cultural context. While the debate about child labour practice in developing countries appears to be motivated by growing competition in labour intensive products brought about by globalization, studies on this issue are both sparse and lopsided. This important book aims to shed light on this debate by documenting the experience of South Asian developing countries which have experienced rapid income and export growth. Based on evidence from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, this volume aims to improve our understanding about the link between trade, growth and child labour practices, as well as management of child labour in developing countries.
"The unprecedented economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, together with school closures and inadequate government assistance, is pushing children into exploitative and dangerous child labor. As their parents have lost jobs or income due to the pandemic and associated lockdowns, many children have entered the workforce to help their families survive. Many work long, grueling hours for little or no pay, often under hazardous conditions. Some report violence, harassment, and pay theft. [This report] is based on interviews conducted from January to March 2021 with 81 children, ages 8-17, in Ghana, Nepal, and Uganda.... The report examines the impact of the pandemic on children's rights, including their rights to education, to an adequate standard of living, and to protection from child labor, as well as government responses."--Page 4 of cover.
