Monitoring International Labor Standards Techniques and Sources of Information (2004) / Chapter Skim
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6 Child Labor
6 Child Labor
Pages 161-196
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From page 161... ...
in the world, 180 million of whom are working in what are referred to as the worst forms of child labor, often involving hazardous conditions. Of these, 8 million children are working in the "unconditional worst forms" of child labor, which include armed conflict, forced and bonded labor, prostitution, pornography, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities.1 1As we discuss below, all estimates of child labor, including those of the ILO, are subject to potentially serious measurement errors and biases: this caution has to be kept in mind throughout this chapter.
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From page 162... ...
Child labor not only harms the child, but also perpetuates poverty and compromises economic growth and equitable development. In this chapter and the report, we follow the ILO usage and use the term "child labor" to mean work that is hazardous to the emotional and physical development of children below a specified minimum age, as distinguished from "child work," which is not automatically considered problematic.
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From page 163... ...
A large proportion of child labor occurs in poor rural areas: nearly 70 percent of the economically active children in developing countries in 2002 worked in rural areas, mostly on family subsistence farms. In many developing countries, poverty is largely, though not wholly, a rural phenomenon, and most of the rural poor are marginal farmers and agricultural laborers.
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138 and No. 182, on establishing a minimum age for employment and on the elimination of worst forms of child labor.
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Although an early English law, approved in 1788, established a minimum age of eight for chimney sweeps, Engerman traced the origins of British child labor laws to an 1802 law applying only to pauper apprentices and to the Factory Act of 1819, which prohibited children under age nine from working in cotton mills. Over the following decades, limits on child labor were gradually extended to other industries, and the age of work was increased, while legal requirements for education were introduced.
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From page 166... ...
found that legal restrictions played a substantial role in the removal of child workers from the cotton mills in Manchester, England, during the industrial revolution. Brown et al.
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182) and the proxy measure most often used to measure child labor, "economically active children." Minimum Age and Worst Forms of Child Labor ILO Conventions No.
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Hazardous work and the worst forms of child labor are never allowed for children. The ILO defines light work as work that is not likely to be harmful to childrens' health or development and not likely to be detrimental to their attendance at school or vocational training.
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From page 169... ...
and child work, most readily available data on child labor actually measure another, simpler, but less satisfactory concept: whether or not a person (child or adult) is engaged in "economic activity." The economically active population is commonly defined as persons who "furnish the supply of labor for the production of economic goods and services as defined by the U.N.
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From page 170... ...
An economically active child may or may not be engaged in child labor by ILO definitions. For example, a 14-year-old child working in a family shop after school is considered economically active but is probably not engaged in child labor, because this work may be categorized as light work appropriate for children over 12, since it is not physically or emotionally harmful and does not interfere with the child's education, or a child kept home from school to do unpaid heavy household work for long hours may be engaged in child labor but might not be considered economically active.
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From page 171... ...
The second level of analysis is to look at the laws of a country to determine whether they conform with the ILO's standards regarding minimum age and worst forms of child labor. Since developing countries may have different minimum ages of schooling and admission to work as allowed by the minimum age convention, it is not necessary to find that countries' laws are fixed at the goal of age 16 for minimum compulsory schooling.
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The U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement also includes enforceable commitments on core labor standards. Because treaties and trade agreements create legally binding commitments if they are part of national law, they can be a relevant part of the legal framework with respect to core labor standards.
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From page 173... ...
to determine whether there is political will to eliminate child labor. Some countries have programs for remediation of child workers, including explicit assistance to ensure that child workers have access to affordable education, which is clearly important.
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; C-5. estimates of the number and percentage of children working in each of the worst forms of child labor (slavery, prostitution, pornography, armed conflict, illegal activities, and hazardous work)
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A list of related indicators would include: labor force participation rate, socioeconomic status of households with working children, poverty rate, adult employment rate, income per capita, income inequality, total fertility rate, life expectancy rate, infant mortality rate, child malnutrition rate, and adult literacy rate. Because the cost and quality of available schooling influence parental decisions regarding sending children to work rather than to school, government expenditures relating to schooling, accessibility of schools, and school quality indicators (such as student-teacher ratios)
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From page 176... ...
Quantitative data collection methodologies concerning working children have taken the form of censuses, household surveys (i.e., national labor force surveys, ILO child labor surveys, and UNICEF and World Bank surveys) , establishment and workplace surveys, and school-based surveys.
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From page 177... ...
Third, survey respondents may be reluctant to report accurately on the work of children engaged in the worst forms of child labor, as many of these activities are illegal, and household heads are unlikely to admit that they and their children are involved in such activities. Finally, where child laborers are concentrated in a specific area or in specific sectors, if the survey design does not take this into consideration (such as through oversampling of households or enterprises in such sectors or regions)
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From page 178... ...
. There are two general-purpose household surveys that collect data on child labor: The Living Standards Measurement Study conducted by the World Bank and the national labor force surveys that are conducted by national governments.
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National Labor Force Surveys We discuss above the strengths and weaknesses of labor force surveys as instruments for collecting data on child labor, the most serious weakness being that they are generally based on economic activity. However, to what extent the data from labor force surveys are biased in estimating child labor as defined by the ILO varies across countries and over time within each country.
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It only compiles and tabulates the estimates and projections of the economically active population that are derived from national labor force surveys and censuses. The population data are midyear population estimates and projections (medium variant)
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From page 181... ...
Because SIMPOC surveys are specifically designed to collect data on child labor, they are discussed at some length here. SIMPOC surveys, which are designed to either stand alone or be attached as a module to labor force surveys, are usually carried out at the request of participating IPEC countries in collaboration with the national survey offices of the host country, labor ministries and ministries responsible for child welfare, nongovernmental organizations, academic and research institutions, and international organizations (UNICEF and World Bank)
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From page 182... ...
The SIMPOC surveys include numerous questions on the characteristics of working children, such as the type of work, hours of work and time of day the work is carried out, conditions of work and characteristics of workplaces, the physical and mental safety of workplaces, schooling, and parent's perceptions of child work, and household chores and hours spent on household chores. In addition, data are collected on the basic demographic, social, and economic characteristics that are often related to work among children.
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From page 183... ...
Many SIMPOC surveys include questions designed to measure the extent of child labor and hazardous child labor as defined by ILO conventions and national laws. All SIMPOC child labor surveys include questions regarding the type of work children are engaged in, such as industry and occupation.
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From page 184... ...
Many SIMPOC surveys also address the extent to which children participate in household chores and the hours they spend on these activities. Finally, the more recent SIMPOC surveys include questions on whether a child is exposed to a hazardous work environment (i.e., work at heights or underground, work with tools or machinery, work in excessive noise or dust, work in extreme temperatures, etc.)
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From page 185... ...
Nevertheless, because education and health are indicators linked to child labor, MICS is an important source that can supplement data from other sources, as well as fill gaps in data for countries where SIMPOC surveys have not been conducted. Rapid Assessment The ILO initiated the rapid assessment methodology out of an urgent need for data on the worst forms of child labor when Convention No.
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From page 186... ...
The great difficulty in obtaining quality information on the worst forms of child labor arises for a number of reasons. First, many of them (e.g., use of children in drug production and trafficking, prostitution, and pornography)
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From page 187... ...
trade unions, consumer groups, corporations, human rights groups, and trade associations; foreign governments and NGOs; and international organizations. The department then conducts field visits during which staff meets with government officials, trade unionists, journalists, and human rights groups.
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The Global March produces the Global Report on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (updated November 2001) with data from a wide variety of sources, ranging from ILO studies and government reports to newspaper articles.
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and a section on "Childrens' Rights: Child Labor" in its World Report 2002. Individual country reports include Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk Industry (Human Rights Watch, 2003)
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The database includes a country overview of child labor, child development indicators, child labor by sector, USAID activities, other child labor program activities, and ratification status on international conventions. Other NGOs that are also engaged in work to eliminate child labor are Defense for Children International, Free the Children, International Save the Children Alliance, and World Vision International.
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From page 191... ...
The University of Iowas' Center for Human Rights has a Child Labor Research Initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Labor to collect, translate, and establish a database of national laws dealing with the worst forms of child labor in 25 countries.
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We encourage governments and the international organizations to allocate the necessary funds to improve the available data in this important area. In addition, compensating parents for lost income from labor of their children and providing adequate schooling for children taken out of child labor would also involve substantial resource cost.
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As part of this project, a joint survey identified 10,546 child workers under the age of 14 in the garment manufac
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Even if the replication of such initiatives is possible, it should be undertaken simultaneously with SIMPOC or SIMPOClike surveys, so that baseline data are available to assess their impact. 6-1 The committee recommends that national and international agencies cooperate in creating a system of data generation focused primarily on child labor, such as the ILO's SIMPOC surveys.
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Shapiro (Eds.) , International labor standards: History, theory, and policy options.
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From page 196... ...
Paper prepared for the National Research Council Workshop on International Labor Standards: Quality of Information and Mea sures of Progress. Washington, DC.
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