Around the world children follow different paths to adulthood. In the developed world, childhood is typically devoted to the pursuit of education. In poorer countries, children are more likely to sacrifice schooling so that they may go to work. These divergent experiences are both caused by, and reinforcing of, the income differences between families in developed and developing countries. In developing countries, many children do not go to school because they have to work to help support their families. But as adults, they remain poor because they have not been educated to develop the skills they need to be more productive and earn more in the workplace. Their children go to work because they are poor. Education is key to breaking this cycle, if only barriers to providing and accessing schooling can be removed. 

A. The Economic Cost of Child Labor

The second chapter of this report showed that the economic costs of child labor include the benefits foregone because working children do not or cannot avail themselves of the opportunity to pursue an education. It reviewed the extensive literature establishing that children are economically better off over the course of their entire lifetimes if they pursue an education while young. The reason is simple: better educated children grow into more productive and better paid adult workers. With few exceptions, this is as true in a developing country as it is in a developed one.

The benefits of education are also likely to be greater than just what accrues to educated individuals. Chapter II examined various ways that education of children can benefit society as a whole. These societal benefits of education seem to sum up to more than just the benefits that accrue to each educated individual. Some of this is related to how much individuals earn, while the rest is related to how individuals interact with one another. A society of educated citizens benefits from individuals who are healthier, more involved in the political process, less dependent on social support programs, less inclined to a life of crime, more likely to save, and more likely to innovate.

As countries end child labor and improve education and long-term productivity—in short, when countries increase their levels of development—they also create economies that can make stronger contributions to the world economy. The chapter suggests that these countries are more likely to be become active and productive trading partners, which could both expand opportunities for workers and firms involved in the export of goods and services from the United States, and make available a wider variety of goods and services to be consumed at low cost by U.S. consumers.

B. Why Children Work

If education makes children and the societies in which they live better off, while having children go to work instead causes them to be worse off, why do children work rather than go to school? Chapter III tackled this question by identifying a myriad of factors that create barriers which keep children in work and out of school. In some cases, families are forced to sacrifice their children’s futures in order to meet their current needs for survival. The barriers implied by this trade-off are related to a “poverty of resources.” In other cases, children work instead of going to school simply because school is not an option available to them. These children suffer from a “poverty of opportunities.” In still other cases, the very availability of work can create a barrier to the schooling of children. And sometimes, the plight of an individual child laborer can be traced to all of the above.

1. Barriers Related to a Poverty of Resources

If a family does not have the resources to survive without the labor of its children, it suffers from a poverty of resources. This poverty is an obvious barrier to schooling for these children. It can arise in many forms. For example:

• Pervasive poverty among households in an economy;

• Inequality in the distribution of income, or the distribution of resources;

• Income lost due to children not working, or high out-of-pocket costs for schooling, or both;

• The use of child labor as insurance against interruptions in the earnings of other members of the household;

• A cycle of poverty within a family resulting from repeated generations of children working instead of going to school.

2. Barriers Related to a Poverty of Opportunities

Some children work because it is the best, or only, option available to them. Alternatives to work for children, or certain groups of children, are restricted by:

• Inaccessible schools;

• Low quality schools or education that is of little relevance;

• Cultural patterns that prevent or discourage the enrollment of girls;

• Attitudes suggesting that certain ethnic and/or social class groups are meant to work with their hands while others are more suited to working with their minds;

• Educational instruction carried out in unfamiliar languages;

• The lack of available credit markets for education or other investments that would yield income allowing the financing of education.

3. Barriers Related to the Availability of Work

These barriers are related to the fact that work is available for children, and that the work would need to be done another way if child labor were eliminated. The barriers relate to the possibility that:

• Children may be “cheaper” to employ than adults because they are more pliable and less likely to resist poor working conditions; and

• Production processes that rely on an abundant pool of unskilled labor, employ few labor saving devices, or both, can create a demand for child labor.

C. Knocking Down the Barriers

How can the barriers that keep children in work instead of in school be overcome? Chapter IV suggested that these barriers can be addressed through a combination of broad policy approaches that encourage macroeconomic growth, national investments in education, and appropriate legal structures that promote schooling while discouraging child labor. In addition, targeted initiatives that focus on the specific needs of working children and their families can help address their immediate needs while encouraging broader action on child labor. Chapter IV focused on the work of one international organization, ILO/IPEC, to illustrate this type of targeted action.

In Chapter IV, a variety of targeted actions were grouped according to the barriers they are expected to overcome: a poverty of resources, a poverty of opportunities, and the availability of work. In any specific context, however, child labor can have causes that span these three categories. As such, effectively addressing child labor may require a comprehensive approach that blends together ingredients from each of these categories.

1. Poverty of Resources

Policies geared towards macroeconomic growth lay the foundation for the elimination of the most obvious obstacle to eliminating child labor—financial poverty. But growth is not enough if it fails to ensure that the income of all families, particularly the poorest families, rises fast enough. Policies stimulating macroeconomic growth may need to be complemented by targeted actions aimed at improving the financial prospects of the poorest families.

Chapter IV described IPEC supported projects to illustrate two general approaches to overcoming the poverty that keeps children out of school. The first approach involved giving families the tools to generate additional income that could replace the income given up when children went to school. For example, projects might provide adult family members with training to help them become more productive in their work. The second approach involved direct subsidy payments made to families. These subsidies are intended to cover the income that children might have earned by working instead of attending school. For subsidies to be effective, a long-term and large financial commitment may be necessary.

2. Poverty of Opportunities

In many cases, children work because appropriate schooling is not available. National policies that promote education are an important step toward eliminating the poverty of opportunities many working children and their families face. By making primary education universal and free, increasing educational expenditure at the primary level, building schools in rural areas, improving teacher training and enhancing school quality and relevance, national policies can make education the most attractive alternative for children.

Targeted projects use a variety of strategies to promote children’s access to training and schooling. Projects may involve building new schools, developing specialized curricula, training teachers, supporting multilingual education programs, bringing education and training directly to children’s work sites, or providing additional tutoring for former working children. Projects also frequently target discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, and social class; discrimination that in many cases restricts the educational opportunities available to certain groups of children. In general, projects seek to raise awareness about the plight of working children and the sacrifice they make in terms of forgone schooling. Finally, by providing families with access to credit and/or training, targeted projects aim to empower parents to pursue profitable investments that can help them to support themselves without the labor of their children.

3. Availability of Work

Efforts to set national and international standards for the employment of children provide an important basis for addressing the demand for child labor. For example, the recent unanimous adoption of Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor by delegates to the ILO’s International Labor Conference in June 1999 sent a clear signal to the international community that such forms of child labor will not be tolerated. National labor laws prohibiting the employment of children under a specified age and in hazardous industries also make it more difficult to hire children.

In addition, targeted projects seek to reduce demand for child labor by making employers less willing to employ children, either because of legal penalties or because they come to believe that employing children is either unnecessary, undesirable, or unprofitable. Some projects may include a monitoring and enforcement component to ensure that industries do not hire child workers. Other projects may provide employers with simple technological innovations that allow them replace children with machines in their production processes.

D. Final Comments

Child labor remains a problem of great global concern. The good news is that the commitment to doing something about it has been strengthened substantially in recent years. The unanimous adoption of Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor and the ever growing participation of countries in IPEC shows that governments around the world agree that children’s work should not lead them to sacrifice their futures. Work that interferes with education means that children, their families, their employers, and their societies will not receive the maximum economic and social benefits from the work children will do as adults.

While the concern is global, the responsibility for addressing this concern ultimately rests at the national and local levels. It is at these levels that barriers to eliminating child labor and increasing educational attainment arise. Likewise, the specific causes of child labor tend to vary from one local context to the next. There is also great need for further data on the causes and outcomes associated with child labor. The international community can help by equipping national and local authorities with the tools to combat child labor and collect such data. But ultimately, the tools must be used within each country and community, and eliminating child labor must be made a national priority.