The contraption was so easy to run,\ inventor of the roller spinning machine John Wyatt said, ""that businesses didn't need as many skilled craftspeople with spinning wheels; they could get by with children instead, even children of five or six years of age.""
Child labor has been all but eliminated in our country, but globally it remains a massive problem. According to the International Labor Organization, around 186 million children worked illegally in 2000. Approximately eight million of these children, ages 5-14, worked as prostitutes, slaves or soldiers. The figures are troubling, but what is the cause of child labor and what is its solution?
The students on campus I have talked to blame corporations. Just read the quote at the beginning of this column; clearly corporations are exploiting our children. Well, yes there are Western companies that use cheap child labor, but this is not the real cause of the problem. More than 70 percent of all child laborers work as farmers, hunters and fishers. These children would not stop working even if all the corporations magically vanished. In fact, more children would start working in the fields. These children work because they are poor. Before the industrial revolution, almost all children were expected to work. The alternative to work for many is starvation.
In the 1990s, politicians and activists often took a zero-tolerance approach to the problem of child labor. These activists wanted the World Trade Organization to place sanctions against countries where child labor exists. This is not the solution.
There is one chilling example of zero-tolerance causing disastrous results. In the 1990s, there was an international push to boycott all carpets produced by children. In response to this boycott, many Nepalese companies fired their children workers. As The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) reported in 1995, somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 of the girls fired ended up as prostitutes.
Many recent studies have very convincingly shown that parental poverty is the main cause of child labor. The best way to end child labor is for parental wages to increase. In China, where personal income has risen steadily, the percent of working children ages 10-14 has dropped from 48 percent in 1950 to 12 percent in 1995. This same trend has been repeated in Vietnam and India. In countries such as Cambodia, where income has stagnated, the percent of children working has barely changed. Most parents do not want their children to work, but if they are earning below subsistence wages, they have no option.
So should we just let free-market capitalism take care of this problem and go back to watching football? No, there are things we can do to speed up the elimination of child labor. Laws discouraging child labor seem like the first approach, though sometimes these laws can have unintended consequences. For example, laws fine companies that have child workers, thereby making child labor less attractive. This can cause a wage decrease and thus increase the number of hours children must work to earn the same income. Therefore, a well-meaning law can lead to children working longer hours. Most countries where child labor is still widespread have official laws banning it. Despite the attempts of many state governments to use laws to end child labor, some enacted as early as the 1830s, child labor did not really begin to decline in the United States until around 1900.
Child labor is clearly a difficult issue. However, there are some concrete steps that can be taken to aid in its demise. First, the conditions and wages of adult workers must be improved. This would include ending the worst sweatshop conditions and possibly creating a minimum wage.
Second, instead of always banning child labor outright, in some cases we should attempt to only limit the hours of legal work and improve working conditions. Often children in developing countries fund their education through work, and in the long run, that education will help them earn more money and live better lives.
Third, offering affordable credit and insurance to poor workers is necessary so that children aren't forced into work because of a parent's illness or an economic downturn. Western charities should place more emphasis on providing small loans and insurance to these high-risk workers.
Finally, public education needs to be encouraged. Providing parents with tax-breaks for sending their children to school and providing meals for the children at school have both been effective at lowering the prevalence of child labor.
Child labor is an issue we can not ignore. The answer is not complacency or blinding moral indignation. Instead, we must carefully weigh the economic and social issues in order to find practical solutions.
