Number cruncher

Most people think that sending children out to work is a bad thing. If children work, they cannot go to school and without education, their long-term prospects in life are minimal. Nevertheless, child labour is commonplace in developing countries today, as it was in the first half of the 19th century in Britain.

Child labour was eradicated in Britain by enforcing compulsory schooling and minimum-age laws for employment. This experience is typical as countries get richer. But many people do not want to wait for countries to develop and feel that child labour should be eliminated across the world now. So they pressure governments in developed countries to impose trade sanctions against industries that employ children. Or they organise campaigns to persuade multinational companies to stop employing children. But is this going to help?

Why are some children in the developing world sent out to work? Because their families are poor and need the income to survive. If pressure from trade sanctions or rules enforced by multinational firms prevent children from working in the export sector, producing footballs for example, how will poor families respond? Since they need their children’s incomes, they will send their children to work in the service or agricultural sectors instead, almost certainly for lower pay but out of reach of externally-generated rules or sanctions. And because the pay is lower, the children will have to work longer hours; if they have any siblings in school, they too are more likely to be withdrawn and sent out to work. Thus this kind of pressure may actually end up increasing child labour.

So what should be done? What is required is the provision of financial incentives for poor families in developing countries to send their children to school and not to work. Some developing countries have had success with these programmes, but they obviously require resources. So if consumers and governments in developed countries want to help, this is the direction in which they should move. Boycotts and trade sanctions could well make things worse.