Bjørne Grimsrud (ed.)
The Next Steps
Experiences and analysis of
how to eradicate child labour
Bjørne Grimsrud (ed.)
The Next Steps
Experiences and analysis of how to eradicate child labour
Order no 932
© Fafo 2002 ISBN 82-7422-368-3 ISSN 0801-6143
Cover page: Agneta Kolstad Cover photo: Bjørne Grimsrud
Printed in Norway by: Centraltrykkeriet AS
Contents
Preface ... 5 Introduction ... 6 Too much work at too early an age ... 9 by Bjørne Grimsrud
Latin America.
A pending debt for social policies ... 25 by Emilio García Méndezand Elena Duro
India: To act and learn ... 41 by Rachel Kurian
Pakistan: From denial to awareness and action ... 57 by M. Zahoor Awan
Africa: In the shadow of AIDS ... 73 by Mohamed Motala
From projects to social change ... 85 by Geir Myrstad
The role of redistribution in eradicating child labour ... 95 by Carol Ann Rogers
The next steps ... 113 Bjørne Grimsrud and Tim Noonan
References ... 124
Preface
Having had the opportunity over the last ten years to work with documentation and research on child labour it has been a welcomed but challenging task to edit this anthology. It has only been possible to present a few examples of all the prac- tical and theoretical work and experiences of all those who have, over the last dec- ade, contributed to the debate around child labour. Hopefully it still represents a broad perspective on the issue, from different points of departure.
I would like to thank the contributors from all continents who have made this book possible. These are individual contributions and the authors are responsible only for their own contributions. I would also like to thank the LO Norway, the FNV Netherlands and the ICFTU for taking the initiative to finance and publish the book. The viewpoints in the different articles in this book are however not necessarily the views or policies of these organisations. Last, I would like to thank Leif Lausund and Astrid Kaag in particular for helping to initiate this book, the Fafo publishing unit for publishing it and Dr Kate Macdonald for her excellent language editing.
Oslo April 2002 Bjørne Grimsrud
Introduction
Child labour is a consequence of deep social and economic conditions and has been on the international agenda from the start of the mid-nineteenth century. The 1990s saw a renewed interest and child labour became a central issue for several interna- tional agencies and organisations. Research and documentation of the type presented in this book have played a crucial role in placing the issue on the public agenda and have brought about a growing understanding of child labour, the reasons ex- plaining it and examples and experiences showing how child labour might be elim- inated.
Child labour was also one of the first issues for the international labour move- ment, based on the fact that child labour is a social issue for poor families from which working children are recruited, and that it is a labour market issue. The re- newed focus in the 1990s was helped by the international trade union movement.
In June 1994 the ICFTU launched what was to became one of the most far-reach- ing campaigns in decades: ‘The International Trade Union Campaign Against Child Labour’. This campaign mobilised trade unions in developing and industrialised countries alike and was instrumental in creating increased support for the engage- ment of the ILO and events like the Oslo Conference on Child Labour in 1997.
The Oslo conference brought UNICEF and the ILO together in formalised coop- eration on child labour in which research was a central activity. The World Bank was invited to cooperate as well, and from this started its own child labour pro- gramme. The Conference was also the birthplace for the alliance between NGOs and trade unions that later organised the Global March against Child Labour.
What have we learnt in these ten years, after all the action taken, research un- dertaken, statements made, guidelines for interventions drafted and tested, trade- related measures debated, pilot projects implemented? The ICFTU has taken the initiative to commission this anthology, asking and analysing just these questions through contributions from some of those who have been central in the debate and activities over the last decade.
The focus of the anthology is not so much on individual activities or projects as on the underlying causes and the long-term solutions to fighting child labour.
The mix of analysis from field experiences and theoretical analysis is intended to show how, from both perspectives, consensus is emerging towards a wider
development agenda in order to eliminate child labour. The concluding chapter debates whether we are on the right track and what should be the next steps.
The ultimate goal against which any activity must be measured is the change which it brings about in people’s lives. Do we see changes in numbers of child labourers or in the nature of child labour? This anthology brings examples of im- portant changes in both practice and numbers but also gives the reader an insight to how little we still know about the effects of all the measures taken over the last decade. Devastating set-backs such as the effects of the AIDS epidemic on child labour in Africa is also a part of the picture reported. In the end the fight against child labour is a fight for social justice and development that will probably need to be fought perpetually.
Too much work at too early an age
by Bjørne Grimsrud1
Most people will have an instant idea of what is on the agenda when we talk about child labour. In short this can be expressed as too much work at too early an age.
But when it comes to more specific descriptions, analysis and actions based on such analyses, disagreements often appear. In this chapter the first aim is to describe what is most commonly meant by child labour. Following this, the economics of child labour are described based on living conditions and labour market studies. This paints a different picture from much of the public focus on the extreme forms of child labour and the small-scale intervention-based focus of many organisations working in the field.
Child labour has attracted growing global public concern over the last decade.
This is, however, not the first time in history that child labour has been on the agenda. Since the first regulations in Switzerland and the disclosure of the working conditions of children in British mines in the early nineteenth century, the issue has emerged at various times at national and international levels. Particularly dur- ing the days of liberal trade regimes and the birth of the labour movement in Eu- rope in the last part of the nineteenth century, child labour was in the forefront of the international labour debates. In 1890 Germany called the first international conference on child labour. These efforts led to the formation of the ILO in 1919 and the adoption of the first child labour convention (ILO C5).
A number of ILO conventions followed and in 1973 a general labour market minimum standard was adopted (ILO C138). The age limits set forth in this Con- vention (see below) still form the basis for national and international legislation in the area. However all the relevant ILO conventions up to and including Conven- tion 138 only deal with child labour in relation to the labour market.
1 Bjørne Grimsrud, Norway. Economist from the University of Oslo. Research coordinator at the Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science in Oslo. Engaged in business development research, stu- dies of child labour and core labour standards and studies of labour markets and industrial rela- tions. Has been engaged as a special adviser to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on child labour (1996-2001) and as a consultant for the World Bank on child labour (October 1998 to June 1999).
In 1989, the fight against child labour entered into a new context when the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child was drawn up. Here child labour was de- fined not according to the activity but according to the effect of the activity on the child. This laid the ground for a renewed understanding of child labour and a renewed fight against it. This new approach was influential in the adoption by the ILO of Convention 182 in 1999.
Using the effects of the activity on the child as a point of departure changes many aspects of dealing with child labour. Firstly, any labour activity, regardless of whether it takes place at a workplace or in the child’s own home, will be included if it is detrimental to the child. This means that the millions of children, especially girls held back from school in order to do housework, will have to be included in the definition. This had not been done before and these children do not appear in the existing statistics (as discussed below). On the other hand, not all work done by children can be regarded as child labour. We need to draw a line between child labour on the one hand and activities considered part of a natural socialization process on the other hand.
Today we can say that the three conventions,: ILO Convention 138, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, form the basis for the international definition of child la- bour. 2 The conditions set forth in the three conventions are more specifically that the work should not be hazardous or harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, moral or social development. In addition, for children up to the minimum age for employment, the work or activity should not interfere with the child’s edu- cation.
All three conventions make references to age-specific regulations as they are described in Convention 138. A child is defined as a person less than 18 years of age. No person under 18 should undertake work that includes health-threatening or hazardous activities, except under very specific and defined circumstances. The minimum age for legally entering the labour market as a full-time worker is set at 14 years of age for developing countries and 15 years in other countries. In all cases full-time work may begin only after the age of completing compulsory education.
The minimum age for entering the labour market doing light work is set at 12 years for developing countries and 13 years in other countries. At this age the child can do some work outside the household, provided that the work does not interfere with schooling or cause a threat to the child’s health. The child may also enter vocational training.
2 As at 20 March 2002 ILO Minimum Age Convention (1973, 138), has been ratified by 116 countries, the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989) has been ratified by 191 countries, and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999, 182), has been rati- fied by 117 countries.
If a child is under 12/13 years of age, he or she should not be active in the labour market, but may still undertake duties within the household or under the guid- ance of the parents and as part of the socialisation process, provided the activity does not interfere with schooling or pose a health threat. Figure 1.1 illustrates the definition of child labour.
Figure 1.1. International definition of ‘child labour’ *
Up to age 14/15 or the age of completion of compulsory education (if higher) Up to age 12/13
Full-time work Dangerous or
hazardous work
Up to age 18 Light work in the
labourmarket;
vocational training
Light work in the home under the guidance of the parents and as a part of the socialization process, provided the work does not interfere with school or threaten health.
*Activities listed in grey areas are considered child labour, activities in white areas are not.
Who and how many?
Most data on child labour to date are based on data of economically active chil- dren as a proxy. Only recently, and ten years after the important changes in the definition of child labour, is this new concept is finding its way into the data col- lection instruments. This means that much of the existing data need to be used with care.
In 1995 the ILO estimated that in developing countries 12% of children be- tween ages 5 and 14 were working full-time, and an equal number were working part-time. Among the full-time workers, boys were found to outnumber girls by three to two. The study extrapolated an estimate that, world-wide, at least 120 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working full-time. The number of children working increases to 250 million if those in part-time work are includ- ed (ILO 1995). Using the internationally recognised definitions of child labour rather than the number of economically active children as a basis for analysing the phenomenon makes the figure look somewhat different. In countries with low pri- mary school enrolment, the number of economically active children will tend to
be less than the number of child labourers. In countries with high primary school enrolment, the number of (combined full-time and part-time) economically active children tends to be higher than the number of child labourers. From this we can assume that the world-wide number of child labourers might be somewhere between the ILO figures of 120 million full-time economically active children and 250 million full- and part-time economically active.
Different groups
The majority of the world’s child labourers are girls, while most economically active children are boys. This difference in number and gender composition is a result of including children’s working in the household, activities defined by the ILO as non- economic. However, the knowledge of the number and working conditions for this group are limited. In many surveys these children often will be categorised as ‘doing nothing’.
A second group, perhaps the largest, comprises children working the family plot or land. These children should in theory be included in the figures of working, economically active children, but often they are not captured in labour market sta- tistics.
The next important group comprises children working in more direct contact with the labour market but still in households, such as those participating in sub- contracted schemes or arrangements where the work takes place at home.
Children working in their own household, at the family plot, and in subcon- tracting at home make up the bulk of the world’s child labourers. Andvig (2001) has estimated that this group comprises something like 90% of all child labour in Africa. The same is probably true on the Indian subcontinent (Burra 1995), the second most common place for child labour after Africa.
Even those working outside the household will in most cases work together with their parents or other family members. Such children help a parent employed in the fields of large farms or plantations to fulfil a production quota or assist in the family business. Family businesses employing children in this way are often in the informal/unregulated service sector.
Only a relatively small number of children are employed directly by an employer.
For example, in Cote d’Ivoire fewer than 2% of the children in the labour market work for wages (Grooteart and Patrinos 1999). (This does not include children working as domestic workers, a group for whom no reliable statistics exist.)
The last group is composed of children not living in their parental household.
This includes the practice of child fostering, or entrusting children to members of the extended family or kin, a common cultural practice in several parts of the world throughout history. In its origins, this tradition was intended to improve the child’s
prospects. This was clearly less complicated in times when schools were non-existent, and working with other household members was the school of life for all children.
The practice of child fostering is today a facilitating factor for the labour and child trafficking. However, far from all foster children can be considered child labourers and the practice plays an important role for extending education and training op- portunities for children and as a security net for children orphaned by AIDS. In some West African states up to 20-30% of children in primary education age groups are fostered children. No reliable figures exist on how many of these are child labourers (Grimsrud et al 2001).
The most extreme forms of child labour, such as prostitution and children tak- en from or sold by their parents, occur comparatively infrequently. Genuine street children, children who not only work in the streets but live apart from their par- ents, are also comparatively few, even if their numbers are reported to be on the rise. Andvig (2001) has estimated that a reasonable assumption for the number of street children for the whole of Africa is less than 1 million.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic and the resultant increased numbers of orphans is a most worrying development in terms of child labour. So far large-scale effects have not manifested, partly because, as mentioned above, traditional security nets like fostering have been able to take care of most of the orphaned children. But these systems are being stretched to their limits and a predictable breakdown in tradi- tional family structures, especially in Africa, will create a large-scale social problem of which child labour will be only one feature. In general, societies will be left with large groups of children outside any adult family structures or alternative socialisa- tion institutions. This must be tackled as a particular challenge within the fight against child labour.
To sum up we are able to describe three main types of child labour:
• The main and most common is parent-controlled child labour, which include work in the child’s own household, work with the family and or in the family business and work for an employer through the parents’ employment relation- ship.
• The next most common group includes children working directly for someone not a member of the their own household, i.e. more traditional employment relationships, undertaken by children living in their parental household.
• The third group contains children who have moved away or have been taken away from their parental household, or whose parents are dead, and children who have not been integrated into other households with adult heads or are being exploited through such new household relations.
When discussing strategies for eradicating child labour it is necessary to specify which group one is seeking to address. An overall explanation and eradication strategy will need to emphasise the two first types, which focus on children living in their parental household, as these groups are by far the largest. This does not downgrade the seriousness with which one needs to address the worst forms of child labour, often found among children in the third group.
Economics of child labour
Child labour is a complex phenomenon whose supply and demand is affected by conditions in the labour market, in the education system, and, to some extent, in the credit market. Additional factors are the patterns of intra-household decisions and the norms and values attached to child labour. Given the shortcomings of the available statistics and confusions about the concept, the literature comprises studies and analysis with different conclusions. However some main factors have been commonly agreed. The first is poverty.
Several studies shows that economically active children represent a decreasing proportion of the total labour force as GDP per capita increases. The World Bank (1998) reported that the labour force participation rate of children aged 10 to 14 years is highest, 30–60%, in countries with per capita income of $500 or less (at 1987 prices). But it declines quite rapidly, to 10–30%, in countries with per capita incomes of between $500 and $1,000. This negative relationship between income and child labour becomes less marked in the more affluent developing countries (in the $1,000 to $4,000 income ranges).
This same correlation between welfare in terms of household income and child labour can be found at the household level. Sasaki (1999) found that household income was generally negatively associated with participation of children in labour activity in most countries where data are available. Among the studies trying to estimate the effects of changes in income, Levy (1995) found that in Egypt a 1%
increase in adult female wages reduced children’s working hours in the labour market by 2.7% for children aged 6–11 years and by 1.5% for those aged 12–14 years.
Simultaneously it increased schooling hours by 2.8% and 0.8%, respectively. Rosen- zweig and Everson (1977) found that in India a 1% increase in adult male wages reduced female children’s hours of labour market work by 1.2%, while a 1% increase in adult female wages caused a decline in female children’s hours of labour market work of 1.4%. Ray (1998) found the same connection between adult wages and children’s participation in the labour market in Peru. There a 1% increase in adult male wages led to a 1% decrease in the probability of children engaging in labour
activity. Even if all these analyses were based on studies of economically active chil- dren rather than child labourers, the findings underpin the connection between family income and child labour.
An analytical problem deriving from the use of statistics in the study of eco- nomically active children as a proxy for child labourers is that access to the labour market is an important determinant for poverty. Since children in the labour mar- ket are mainly taken there by their families, economically active children tend to be from households with economically active parents. Analyses thus tend to exclude those households where both the adults and the children are permanently or tem- porarily out of the labour market and the households with the weakest connection to the labour market. Further to this, both children and adults working in the illegal informal economy might be systematically less represented in the statistics.
The poorest households may thus, for both these reasons, be systematically excluded from the analyses. The connection between child labour and poverty may therefore be even stronger than the present studies suggest
Intra-household division of work
As mentioned, working children normally belong to a household where some sort of pooling of resources and division of tasks takes place. Typically the adult (male) head of household works in the labour market, while children (and adult females) work within the household. Changes in the adults’ labour market participation will have implications for the children in the household.
Analysts have long understood that an increase in unemployment can cause an increase in labour supply, thereby exacerbating the unemployment problem. Basu et al (1999) showed how this ‘added worker effect’ was stronger than the ‘discour- agement effect’ for low-income households. If the primary breadwinner had little possibility of finding work (income), a low-income household will send other members of the household to seek work also. These secondary members may be children or adults for whom the children must assume some of the domestic duties.
Bringing the children along with themselves to the labour market may also increase the adults’ opportunities for work. This is particularly true in agricultural work and in other types of piece-rate employment, such as brick kilns or garment subcon- tracting (Grimsrud and Melchior 1996).
Several studies seem to confirm this connection between adult and child work.
Sasaki (1999) found in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Colombia that as mothers participated in the labour force, children were more likely to be economically active.
In Ghana (Canagarajah and Coulombe 1998) children were more likely to be economically active if parents were self-employed in the agricultural sector.
Chandrasekhar (1994) found the same complementarity in analysing data from the
1981 Indian census. Participation in the labour market by children and adults moves in tandem across India.
The interpretation of these findings will be that economically active children are more likely to have economically active parents than non-economically active children. Some studies, however, find a difference in the correlation between the mother-and-child participation rate and the father-and-child participation rate.
Diamond and Fayed (1998) found that child labour was complementary to adult male labour and substitutes for adult female labour.
The relationship between the number of sisters and child labour also seems to be significant in several places. The oldest girl in a family has a greater likelihood than other children in the household of doing domestic work and not going to school, while boys, in particular those with older sisters, have a greater likelihood of going to school (Andvig 2001). Research from Africa indicates that in several societies household composition is deliberately changed through child fostering or adopting children in order to create an optimal division of labour within the house- hold (Pedersen 1987, Ainsworth 1996). There is not, however, as mentioned above, a direct connection between fostering and child labour.
In general, parents of child labourers are not people who let their children work instead of themselves, but people who find it necessary to draw on more of the household’s resources to secure the necessary income. Child labour thus does not replace adult labour, but complements it, either directly in the labour market or in the household, enabling adult family members to enter the labour market. The result of this is the ‘added worker effect’, which, paradoxically, may lead to both higher adult unemployment and lower wages. This leads to a U- or Z-shaped labour supply curve. At and around the subsistence minimum remuneration households will in- crease their labour supply if wages or other types of remuneration drop (and de- crease the supply if wages increase). Above this subsistence minimum the supply
Figure 1.2 Remuneration against working hours.
Remuneration
Working hours
Demand Supply
of labour will decrease if remuneration drops. At the top, leisure time is priced higher than additional income again, and hence increased wages may again lead to a drop in the labour supply. While most economic planners are assuming that the econo- my is operating in the middle field of this supply curve the fact might be that most households in developing countries are operating at the lower end. One could as- sume this to be the case for the quarter of the global population presently living on less than a dollar a day.
Demand for child labour
Employed children generally work side by side with adults and perform the same tasks. There are only a few examples of an explicit demand for child labour. Re- searchers find no support for the ‘nimble finger’ argument, that there might be technical reasons relating to production for which manufacturers would favour children. Child labourers in the manufacturing industry are most commonly en- gaged in the production of low- and medium-quality products (Burra 1995). If the
‘nimble finger’ hypothesis were true, that children were more suitable labourers than adults, the pattern should be reversed, with child labourers most common in high- quality production. Children and adult labourers should therefore be regarded as substitutes in demand.
Another possible demand-side explanation for child labour is that it is caused by a shortage of labour in general, leading to more marginal groups entering the labour market. If so, one should expect to find a corresponding upward adult wage pressure. This is certainly sometimes the case, but the more commonly observed effect is downward pressure on adult wages.
The direct labour market demand for children is closely linked to the price of their labour. The more opportunities for the employer to hire children at a lower price than adults, the more demand for child labour. These differences in opportu- nities could be caused by lack of legislation, lack of control, or acceptance through social norms. The more important indirect demand (the supply in conjunction with the parent’s work) for child labour is, as described above, linked to the adult’s in- come opportunities.
Work and education
One of the parameters defining child labour is whether the work done by children interferes with their education. Here the definition includes a normative assumption
that all children, regardless of background, should get at least a minimum amount of schooling (by different international conventions interpreted as a minimum of 5 years from ages 7 to 12). The existence of child labour will therefore be very dependent on what in this context may be called the education market. This may be just as important in explaining child labour as labour market conditions. For India, the country believed to have the highest absolute number of child labour- ers, it has been assumed that 70% of these children would go to school if given the opportunity of free education of a minimum quality (Burra 1995).
The decision within a household on how much time a child should spend at school or at work is influenced by both the assessed cost and the benefits from school- ing and job opportunities. It is evident that the supply of child labour will increase as education costs to the household increase. Several studies confirm that increased household expenditure on schooling reduces the enrolment rate. This important side of child labour is examined further later on in this volume.
Attitudes, values, and norms
The preceding text focused on the economic parameters that help explain child labour. In addition to the economic reasons, an explanation of child labour must include attitudes, values and norms surrounding the phenomenon. Many coun- tries show a much higher enrolment rate for boys than for girls and hence much higher incidences of child labour among girls than boys. Andvig (2001) concluded that it is almost impossible to explain the great difference in tasks and total work- ing hours between girls and boys in many African communities without invoking social norms as behavioural guidance.
Road to development or development trap?
While poor families may have reasons for deciding to put their children to work, child labour may not be in the society’s best interest nor in the best interests of the families in the long run. The fact that child labourers generally are unable to ac- quire the type of human capital that allows them to have a fair chance in the la- bour market may translate at the national level into a labour force that is ill equipped to compete in today’s global economy. To analyse precisely the costs and benefits of child labour is difficult.
The private return on child labour has several elements. It represents the child’s money income; the value of the child’s work in the family enterprise, at the family plot, or in the household; the increased income opportunities for adult members of the household; and the skills or increased labour market opportunities the child acquired while working.
Research has shown that the money earned and the learning effects from child labour are generally not of great economic importance for the household,3 but the value of the work done and the increased income opportunities for adult members of the household may be of more importance. There will, of course, be differences among households.
The direct costs of child labour are primarily the depreciation of human capital through lack of education and work-related illnesses and disabilities. It is difficult to measure the exact effects of work-related hazards, but existing data clearly indi- cate that children often work in dangerous environments. Available statistics do not tell to which extent children are more exposed to work-related illnesses than adults, but according to the ILO (1999), a large number of economically active children are affected by various hazards. A special study on economically active children in part of Turkey found that up to 66% of the children worked in health-threatening conditions. The working conditions of the children working in the household are basically undocumented. Some studies, including one from Yemen (Grimsrud 1998), indicate that children working under the guardianship of their parents have less harsh working conditions than others. A general conclusion is that negative health effects of child labour are definitely a problem, but there are no statistics to describe the magnitude of this problem.
Does the child’s or the family’s decision whether the child should work, take all costs into consideration? For example, is adequate consideration given to serious occupational injuries or disabilities, accidents that may happen only to this partic- ular child and only in the distant future? In one ILO study (1995), almost all of the working children were unaware of possible health hazards caused by their work- ing conditions. The full health costs of child labour are probably not taken into consideration by the household when deciding whether the child will work. Nor- mally the employer must assume some of the responsibility for occupational inju- ries or disabilities. To the extent that this responsibility is reduced when hiring children, the household supplying child labour will have to assume greater respon- sibility and costs following occupational injuries.
3 See, for example, Grimsrud et al (2001), where studies of income contributions from children are analysed and only those looking at the small percentage of working children directly employed by an employer outside the household contribute significantly (10 to 20%) to their family’s income.
The future return to education is crucial in determining how beneficial it will be for the household to send children to school. Several studies (Psacharopoulos 1994) show a high return to investment in education at the national level. In order there- fore to explain the observed level of child labour it may be argued that risk-averse households systematically underestimate the value of education, and that there may be intertemporal distribution problems between those who have to invest in edu- cation and those who will receive the return of this investment. Baland and Rob- inson (2000) have described such intergenerational distribution problems and showed that even if parents are fully altruistic towards their children they might send their children to work at the expense of these children’s future earnings be- cause the family are so poor that such a delay in income is not possible. Further- more, the same parents may face capital market imperfections, which prevent them from compensating for this through borrowing.
Anker and Melkas (1995) described the intergenerational vicious circle com- prising poverty, fertility, child work, school enrolment, and economic development.
Couples in poor households have more children, partly because the possibility that the children can work reduces the cost of having children. High fertility in turn increases the need for the income provided by child labour. It also reduces the ed- ucation levels of future generations, thereby helping to ensure that future genera- tions will have high fertility, since parents’ education is one of the most important determinants of fertility. Breaking this circle may impose an extra burden on the generation that does so.
It might also be the case that the effect of child labour on the child’s future income is not fully taken into consideration. In a study on child labour in late nine- teenth-century American families, Parson (1989) found that poor working-class parents placed little value on the forgone schooling.4
On the demand side, producers might assume that with an increased labour supply as a result of child labour, their return on capital would increase. But a reduction in the child labour supply would result in higher wages for both children and adults. At the macro level it could be that if children were withdrawn from the work force, certain activities within specific industries and some industries in their entirety might shrink or face closure. In the long run, however, an increased edu- cation level could pave the way for increased labour productivity.
4 Parson concludes that this at least provides no support for the positive intergenerational transfer models prevalent in much of the human capital, fertility, and macroeconomics literature.
Growth and development
The neoclassical growth model normally does not differentiate between different types of labour; child labour is the same as other types of labour. Intra-household pooling of labour and discrimination among different labour markets are also not normally reflected in the neoclassical growth model. If children are hired, it is because their work at the wage paid has a positive marginal return to the enterprise output and hence to growth. In the neoclassical model, a sustained increase in investment raises the economic growth rate only temporarily, the ratio of capital to labour goes up, the marginal product of capital declines, and the economy moves back to a long- term path, with output growing at the same rate as the work force (quality-adjusted, in more recent versions) plus a factor to reflect improving ‘productivity’. Because the last term is exogenous, determined outside the model, critics say that the neo- classical model ignores the very engine of growth. The existence of child labour does not therefore in a neoclassical growth framework seem to pose any particular development problem. The working children represent both in themselves and by the corresponding growth in adult labour supply a source of economic growth (de- pending somewhat on how one defines productivity and on the quality of growth in the labour force).
The other main theoretical approach to economic growth is called endogenous growth theory. This approach brings improvements in productivity, notably due to innovation and investment in human capital, fully inside the model, so that outputs grow faster than exogenous factors alone would make them grow. Human capital, for example, is not just another input into the production process (albeit complementary to other inputs such as physical capital) with diminishing marginal returns, but one with the characteristics of a non-rival public good and one whose accumulation can make marginal returns to other inputs, particularly physical cap- ital, increase rather than diminish.5
Some contributions to endogenous growth theory emphasise positive external- ities of the actions of agents. Hence, with different preferences, the technological and demographic parameters being the same, the steady state growth rate will gen- erally be different, essentially because the positive externalities are exploited to a lesser or greater degree. The existence of child labour may be an indication that positive externalities from investment in human capital are not fully exploited. The
5 Some economists criticize endogenous growth theory for not being based on well-specified mi- croeconomic foundations. He believes that without an analytical framework to formalize the pro- cess of human capital accumulation and how it relates to aggregate growth in different economies, it is impossible to infer anything meaningful from the statistical significance (or lack thereof ) of the estimated parameter associated with the human capital variable.
innovation of these contributions relative to the neoclassical model is that the rate of technological change, a fortiori the rate of growth, is no longer taken as given from outside, but is envisaged as depending on the ‘behaviour’ of the agents: that is, on their preferences and priorities.
Most endogenous growth theories assume the individual or household to be maximising lifetime welfare in the form of an inter-temporal utility function. This allows a perception of child labour as lost investment in one time period. Based on Lucas (1988) we can assume that the economy’s representative agent maximised its utility function over time.6 A decision in the household to let the children spend less time working and more time in school could be an example of this. Produc- tion in the second period will hence depend not only on the number of workers, but also on their productivity and the quality of their works. Lucas adds to this a term (h*), representing an external effect associated with the accumulated human capital; the more human capital society as a whole has accumulated, the more productive each single member will be.
In this way endogenous growth theory makes human capital development essential for economic growth. It also foresees externalities associated with this human capital development. If child labour should be a phenomenon in an early stage of industrialisation, the lost opportunities that one generation has to forgo in order for future generations to prosper, in this model not only must it be an optimal deployment of resources in period one, but it must also offset the reduced return to human capital in later periods, while in the neoclassical theory this was not the case. The endogenous growth theory hence seems to offer an analytical tool that casts new light over the connections between child labour and macroeconomic performance.
6 The agents have a choice between two ways of spending their non-leisure time: to contribute to current production (u) or to accumulate human capital (1 - u). It is the allocation of time between the two alternatives contemplated that determines the growth rate. The human capital is built up as follows. Let (h) be the stock of human capital per unit of labour available at a given time; (1 - u) the fraction of time spent studying; and (v) a positive constant; then the change of (h) over time is assumed as given by:
H (growth) = vh(1 - u)
Agents decide according to their preferences about the allocation of their time; that is, they fix (u), and therefore determine the growth rate of output. For example a decrease in (u) involves a reduction in current output growth at the same time that it speeds up the formation of human capital and thereby increases future growth.
Conclusions
To eradicate child labour in general one needs to address the factors leading to it.
Research tells us that child labour is most commonly a result of decisions taken in the parental household based on two major factors: poverty/adult income oppor- tunities and access to/costs of education. In addition to this, values, norms, legis- lation and risk mitigation also influence the decisions. A group exists, compara- tively minor in number but not in seriousness, comprising the children who in different ways have lost their links to the parental household and for that reason in some way or another are forced into labour.
To the extent that research has been conclusive it shows that households tend to underestimate the cost of child labour by underestimating the future return to education and heath risks involved and hence supplying too much child labour.
Legislation and social norms may work to correct this. In some cases, however, existing social norms may support child labour, as, for example, in the case of girls being taken out of school and set to work in the household instead.
The benefits for the families are in added work capacity rather than added in- come. Working children’s relationships to the labour market are generally closely linked to the parent’s labour market relations. With reduced income the household will respond by sending its children out into the labour market or will let them take over tasks in the household or on the family land that release adult labour for the labour market. Such increased child labour could be stimulated by an external crisis that the household was not able to resolve though the credit market.
To determine the effects of child labour on development at the macro level much depends on the value placed on human capital development and education. If human capital development is regarded as primarily a costless transformation of skills at the workplace, as in neoclassical growth theory, child labour may be seen as ben- eficial for growth. If human capital development is regarded as an investment, as in new growth theory, child labour will be seen to permanently reduce wealth cre- ation in an economy.
Latin America.
A pending debt for social policies
by Emilio García Méndez1 and Elena Duro2
Child labour is a complex and growing problem in Latin America. Although fam- ily poverty is a major factor leading to this phenomenon, it is not a sufficient cause in itself. Indeed, it is poverty combined with low-quality public education which push young girls and boys to work. There are also other factors intricately woven into the cultural fabric. These include opinions and attitudes of both parents and children towards child labour; the perception of the role of childhood and the rights of the child; the weight of tradition and the subtle ways in which it perpetuates itself and predominant local views that child and adolescent labour is a social con- trol mechanism.
It is true that knowing how many children and adolescents work, where they work, under what conditions, and how much they contribute to family incomes is important in terms of assessing the problem. However, this information alone will not help us to define strategies to solve the problem. Along this line, we feel that analysing child labour from the standpoint of the tension that it creates within the education system is a more appropriate approach to finding solutions and eradi- cating the problem.
1 Emilio García Mendez, Argentina In 1974, he earned his law degree from the University of Bu- enos Aires. In 1984, he obtained a PhD in law from the University of Saarland, Germany. From 1990-1993, we worked for UNICEF as Project Officer in Brazil. From 1993-1999, he was regio- nal advisor on the Rights of the Child for UNICEF’s Regional Office in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 1999, he has been a consultant for UNICEF’s field offices in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay as well as a consultant for the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH) and the Inter-American Children’s Institute (IACI).
2 Elena Mariana Duro, Argentina (1964). In 1985, she earned her university degree in education sciences from the National University of La Plata (UNLP). In 1991, she obtained a degree in rese- arch methodology from the University Di Tella. In 1998, she worked as an educational planning specialist for UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). From 1995-1999, she worked as Director of Planning for the Province of Buenos Aires’ Ministry of Education. Since 2000, she has been a consultant on Education and Child Labour issues for UNICEF’s field office in Argentina as well as a consultant for the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH).
Measuring the magnitude of the growing reality of child and adolescent labour in Latin America is another problem. Indeed, statistics on child and adolescent labour mainly come from sources that were not specifically assigned to monitor this real- ity: population censuses and household surveys. The problem of scarce and insuf- ficient information is compounded by the weakness of statistics coming from edu- cation systems, whose degrees of reliability vary from country to country. It should be mentioned that several studies on the subject have shed light on the implica- tions of child labour on children and adolescents. However, these studies are irregular and cannot be used to make generalisations or establish population-wide statistics.
Despite progress made by some countries to produce reliable sources of infor- mation to assess the magnitude of the problem, the lack of rock-solid figures is yet another reason why some countries have not taken steps towards establishing pol- icies to address the problem.
Household surveys conducted in Latin America in 1995 indicate that 15% of young girls and boys between the ages of 10 and 14 work. This percentage amounts to roughly 7.6 million children. If we take rural areas and domestic labour into account, the number of child workers under the age of 15 could actually be around 20 million. According to these same figures, one out of every five children between the ages of 10 and 14 work.
Naturally there seems to be a positive correlation between age and entry into the job market. According to household surveys conducted in various countries, there is a higher proportion of adolescents than children in the labour market. In Costa Rica, for example, the total number of child and adolescent workers in 1994 could be broken down as follows: 21% between the ages of 5 and 11; 28% between the ages of 12 and 14; and 52% between the ages of 15 and 17 (Torrico 1996). In Colombia, the total number of child and adolescent workers between the ages of 12 and 17 could be broken down as follows: 16% between the ages of 12 and 13, and 84% between the ages of 14 and 17 (Florez and Mendez 1998). If we add adolescent workers between the ages of 15 and 18 to the 20 million figure, the total number of child and adolescent workers in Latin America stands at roughly 30 million.
Based on a review of available statistics, child and adolescent labour in the region is predominantly unpaid or paid work carried out for family members. Domestic labour and freelance work outside the family circle does not seem to be as com- mon. Children start their working life by helping their parents without being paid.
These children gradually become more independent and are eventually hired as paid employees, generally in the informal economy. Another segment becomes self- employed, usually in the area of services or trade.
On the issue of the contribution that child and adolescent workers make to family incomes, we should point out that this is only an initial consideration. We must also analyse the situation from the standpoint of rights. Here we are not talking so much about how much children and adolescents earn but rather how much they lose when they start working at a young age. We must therefore consider the price that children and adolescents pay for this contribution in terms of their immediate and future well-being. By this, of course, we are referring primarily to the loss of education capital. The next step would be to seek ways to provide the same eco- nomic contribution to families so as to enable children and adolescents to stop working.
Although error margins in the calculation of incomes are known, a household survey conducted by ECLAC (1995) on the 13-17 age group sheds light on the economic contribution of child and adolescent labour. According to this survey, this economic contribution to poor and destitute households in the region is actually rather limited. The presence of millions of child and adolescent workers in the re- gion has not reduced overall poverty levels. However, from a macroeconomic per- spective, and only considering households with adolescent workers, the percentage of poor households would increase by 10% to 20% if these adolescent workers were to stop working in the absence of any accompanying measures.
Achievements in coverage and challenges in terms of equity
The relation between school and premature work is a source of controversy. There is sufficient evidence to indicate that work either hinders access to education or interferes with satisfactory school performance within the established timeframes.
Earlier, we estimated that there were 30 million child and adolescent workers in the region. It has also been shown that working children and adolescents tend to repeat courses of study, are over-age and show poor performance. Many more work- ing students drop out of the education system entirely than their fellow non-work- ing students. There are not enough studies at the regional level that refer to this tension. Neither do such studies examine the impact of child and adolescent labour on school dropout rates. However, schools need to work on preventing the scourge of premature work as well as on providing the quality of education needed to erad- icate the phenomenon.
Although efforts were made in the 1980s to provide universal and compulsory elementary education in the region, not all the countries have managed to reach
this objective. As far as the reforms launched in the 1990s are concerned (referred to as second generation reforms), some progress towards improving the quality of services has been made. Indeed, some of the most successful aspects have been ed- ucation standards leading up to the development of a legal framework for change.
Education laws were enacted to extend the duration of compulsory elementary education. National systems were set up to assess learning levels and train teachers.
However, the failures and weaknesses of results obtained are causes of concern.
Finally, we should mention that over the past twenty years, despite being mentioned in international and national documents, standards and speeches, equity has taken a back seat in the debates and drafting of public policies. To give an example, there have been isolated efforts to test compensatory policies. However, these efforts have been made without pre-established mid- and long-term goals. There has also been a heavy dependence on the allocation of resources.
In Latin America, the net rate of children entering first grade varied between 37% and 97% both at the beginning and end of the 1990s. Although we can say that most children attend primary school, the aim of getting all school children to attend school is still a long way off. Indeed, by the end of the 20th century, between 6% and 28% of children did not reach fifth grade. Despite progress, it is unlikely that there will be a dramatic reduction in illiteracy rates over the long term. More- over, it is very likely that children who do not reach fifth grade will live in poverty when they grow up.
Dropout and repetition rates are still high. The reasons prompting children to drop out of school are actually a combination of factors both inside and outside the education system. In the 1990s repetition in the region was still high, between 2% and 9% by the end of the decade.
A few aspects need to be highlighted:
Despite considerable expansion of education in the region, there are still unequal opportunities between the various social classes. Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest degrees of inequality in the world.
According to the analysis presented in ECLAC’s Social Panorama 1999 (ECLAC 2000), child labour is one of the factors that affect the education of children and adolescents in Latin America; children and adolescents who work fall behind by approximately two years of study, which means less income when they reach adult- hood.
Data from Latin America indicates that there is no discrimination against young girls gaining access to and remaining in elementary school. However, this does not mean that gender discrimination does not exist in some contexts, such as in rural zones, indigenous areas and urban ghettos. In fact, discrimination can be seen in the fact that boys attend school longer than girls.
Poverty leads to high infant mortality rates, malnutrition and other serious child- hood insufficiencies. Lack of education is the primary cause of teenage pregnan- cies.
Recognising that a ‘cost of opportunity subsidy’ is one of the four key requi- sites means recognising the magnitude of the problem of child labour. Even with insufficient information from the sector and the weakness of household surveys and censuses that allude to this problem, such a measure would place the issue on the public agenda in a way that considers the impact of child and adolescent labour on education.
Although rhetoric on education policies has stressed the importance of equality over the past twenty years, less has been done at the implementation stage. The reason why equity, quality and efficiency are mentioned together is because they are related concepts. Quality and equity can be considered as merging towards the same goal: efficiency. Along this line, an efficient education system is one that pro- duces average performance rates that exceed expectations made according to the social background of students (quality). An efficient education system therefore leads to a better balancing of the effects that socio-economic background have on per- formance (equity). Education systems that are able to obtain both high quality (excellent learning levels) and equity (social distribution of knowledge) are consid- ered to be efficient (Cervini 1999).
Based on the foregoing, it seems clear that education systems with high rates of internal inefficiency are those where priority is neither on equity nor on quality.
Such wastage or inefficiency of education systems can be measured in terms of repetition, dropouts, over-age students and the number of years it takes to com- plete the required studies. When examining this reality, it is important to realise the high costs that such situations engender: personal, social, economic, financial and education costs (UNESCO 1998).
Among the personal, social and economic costs, we can mention the following:
children who drop out of school before having learned basic reading and writing skills tend to fall into illiteracy; a ‘failure mentality’ sets in and is accompanied by problems of self-esteem and negative attitudes towards school; repeating subjects tends to be a precursor to dropping out of school entirely. Wasting school capaci- ties is detrimental to the economic interests of countries, since education makes a major contribution to economic growth and significantly improves the quality of labour.
As far as financial costs, are concerned, the figures are alarming. A study of the public cost of wastage of school capacity per region revealed that repetition alone amounted to a total of 6 billion dollars, 50% of which corresponded to Latin America and the Caribbean. Repetition is also inefficient because it raises the cost per student without increasing the number of graduates.
The impact in terms of education costs can be measured in two ways. Firstly, the capacity of schools to absorb a larger number of students is reduced, with an accompanying reduction in quality (overcrowded classrooms, limited human and material resources). Secondly, there are the mid- and long-term repercussions of adult illiteracy.
Table 2.1. Estimation of public cost of education wastage in Latin America towards 1995.
n o i g e
R Estimationofthecostofrepetition Ordinarypublicexpendituresin n
o i t a c u d e l
a t o T
f o r e b m u n
t a e p e r
n i ( s t n e d u t s
) s d n a s u o h t
r e p t s o C
t n e d u t s
) s r a l l o d n i (
t s o c l a t o T
s n o i l l i m n i (
) s r a l l o d f o
l a t o
T Costofwastage e d a r g h t 5 e r o f e b
n i t a L
a c i r e m A
e h t d n a
n a e b b i r a C
1 2 2 , 0
1 312 3,189 Inmillions s r a l l o d f o
s n o i l l i m n I
s r a l l o d f o
f o
% n I
e h t
l a t o t
0 0 8 , 2
7 19,393 26.6 Source: UNESCO (1998).
There are two types of factors that cause repetition: the socio-economic background of students and the quality of education (inadequate offer). In terms of quality of education, the reduction of the real time dedicated to teaching and quality seem to be the most relevant issues. In a study of the region (Schiefelbein and Wolff 1993) the following factors were identified:
• characteristics and situation of students: learning difficulties, poverty, lack of reading materials, illiteracy of parents, premature labour activities
• poor quality teaching: inadequacy of textbooks, insufficient time spent on teach- ing, low and heterogeneous pre-school coverage, lack of healthcare and nutri- tion supplies, use of inefficient teaching methods
• heterogeneous age and social levels within student groups: teaching strategies aimed at the ‘average student’ increase the likelihood of academic failure.
Indicators for the region give 45.7% repetition, which amounts to a total of 10,033,982 students. The financial cost has been estimated at anywhere between 1 billion and 4.2 billion dollars per year in 1990 (ECLAC 2000, vol 1).
As we mentioned earlier, wastage of school capacities, repetition and dropout rates generally have tremendous personal consequences and consume a dispropor- tionate amount of limited resources. For our countries, it is vital that this scourge
be dealt with. Indeed, the large number of young girls and boys excluded from the education system means a large number of future adults who will be prevented from taking an active part in social, political and cultural life. If this problem is not tackled, education systems will continue accentuate inequality and increase the in- cidence of child labour.
The challenge that we face is to determine to what extent working children and adolescents repeat, are over-age or drop out of the education system. In cases where they do manage to finish their studies, we also need to identify the degrees of per- formance that they achieved. Knowing the characteristics of the population with inefficiency indicators would be a major step forward in terms of approaching and designing policies for the eradication of child and adolescent labour.
Education and work tend to be analysed from the perspective of education level and type of job. A recent study (ILO 2000) shows a correlation between education level, jobs and wages for young people in Latin America. Along this line, there is a positive relationship between these three variables. With regards to the effect of education on average income levels, we find that those individuals with a second- ary school education (13 or more years of schooling) earn 4.6 times more than those with an elementary school education. Furthermore, the report reveals that those who complete elementary school (6 to 9 years of schooling) earn 42.1% more than those who have attended school for up to 5 years. The level of income increases in direct proportion to studies (those who finish secondary school earn 46.3% more than those who stop after elementary school). Finally, those who pursue their studies to the post-secondary level, earn more than double that of those who have finished secondary school.
The data showing a correlation between education and higher incomes gener- ally comes from economists, who tend to analyse education strictly in terms of cost/
profit, efficiency of expenditures and rates of return. However, calculations of rates of return do not take into account external factors3 nor the non-economic benefits derived from education. For this reason, we should be very cautious in our appraisal of these results. However, the one good thing that comes out of all of these studies is that they all conclude that more money needs to be spent on education.
Finally, we should mention the need to widen the debate and analysis on the contribution that education makes towards societal development. Indeed, what is needed is an interdisciplinary approach in which all sectors concerned interact.
Although education is undoubtedly an essential and decisive factor in societal de- velopment, it is insufficient. It is overly simplistic to maintain that the inequalities
3 External factors are indirect effects of a given action (positive or negative). In the case of educati- on, these external factors are always positive. For example: assimilation of democratic values, re- duction of illiteracy rates, lower infant mortality rates, fewer acts of violence, etc.
in the region caused by the unequal distribution of wealth can be counterbalanced by more or better education or by spending more on elementary education (assessed in terms of generated rates of return). Indeed, the benefits derived from education are complex and go far beyond profit considerations.
A case study: Argentina
In this section, we shall take a look at the tension that having to work creates with- in the education system. We shall examine facets of a reality that neither academic studies nor education policies have adequately considered. Indeed, it has never been a priority theme in attempts to identify obstacles and factors hindering access to the education system and affecting school enrolment. Moreover, analysis of aca- demic success and failure levels has overlooked the influence of child and adoles- cent labour.
The education system in Argentina has improved considerably over the past few decades and now offers wider education coverage. Indeed, Argentina has one of the highest compulsory elementary education coverages in Latin America, with over 98% of all children attending school. As for adolescents, the steady increase in the number of secondary school graduates is a reflection of increased school enrolment.
In 1980, 33.4% of all adolescents attended secondary school. In 1991, this figure increased to 53.5%. Today, the figure has reached 77.2% for the entire country.
This capacity to bring adolescents back to school in such a short period of time is a major accomplishment for the education system. Along this line, we can say that Argentina is fulfilling a necessary requirement for democratic education: inclusion of all social classes.
In Argentina, 22% of all schoolchildren attending elementary school are over- age. This figure varies considerably from province to province, between 12% and 38%. In relation to the average figure, over-age children constitute more than 34%
of enrolment at the national level. The figures for the 1996–1997 period show a national dropout rate of 17.87%. The percentage of students that started at this level and then did not complete their studies exceeds 50%. As for the incidence of repetition, the national average is 9%, with differences between provinces. It should be mentioned that among the adolescents who repeated their course of studies in secondary school, 30.3% dropped out for the period considered.
The tension between education and work starts at elementary school. In urban areas, more than 250,000 boys and girls under the age of 14 work, despite the fact
