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Why Should We Care About Child Labor?

In: Business and Management

Submitted By Clairetga
Words 791
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Why should we care about child labor?
The education, labor market, and health consequences of child labor

Contribution/Findings: The article's main purpose was to figure out the correlation between children of the ages 8 to 13 who worked and how it affected education, health and wage earnings. Also they tried to find a correlation between the price of rice to the amount of child labor. They did two studies one for the years 1992 to 1993 and then for the years 1997 and 1998. The article also mentions findings from several other studies. I found the article enlightening and intriguing especially how they categorize child labor. We look at it so negatively in the state this article really opened my eyes to a different look on what child labor is in smaller undeveloped countries. They included children's chores or those kids who worked on family farms or other family owned businesses not just what we see in sweatshops and things of that nature. The findings and results are clearly listed and presented well in this article. Which they do do several charts with their breakdowns. However, while the information was clearly there it was a tad bit difficult to understand. It seems like several numbers were just thrown around and it wasn't broken down into layman's terms. As well as they have pretty complicated formulas that weren't very well explained as to what each variable stood for. Which made it a little bit harder for me to understand and get a good grasp of the information.
Theory: The first paragraph starts right into their series. As well as questions that they had about the gap in research that hadn't already been done. With the gap of research that is what led them to dig deeper into the subject and close in some of those gapped areas. He looked at both the theoretical and empirical data.
Statistical methods: This article you standard deviation of multiple regression. They surveyed 4800 households between the years 1992 in 1983. Out of those 4,800 they reinterviewed 4,300 in the years 1997 and 1988. Out of all the households surveyed only 2158 children lived in those households. They also did a community survey, which the amount of people isn't disclosed. They surveyed those children in Vietnam ages 8 to 13 both boy and girl in rural areas where there was always like a lot of farming. They also did their best to try and take out all any possible and all bias out of the equation. They also factored in the possibility of the parents education, the number of tractors, price of rice, amount of roads possibly affecting the level of child labor as well.
Weakness: I found the article to be very credible. However, I found small gaps. For example there was missing data from some of the surveys. As well as it seemed they had too much information on things that didn't 100% apply to the theories and hypothesis. Originally they stated they wanted to compare and see if the amount of child labor was correlated with the price of rice at the time but I didn't see much information that applyed to that.
Strengths: The strengths in this article are that even though you can get lost in the wording the beginning and the end bring it altogether. It allows you to know what they're talking about and what they truly found.
Conclusion: this discussion section is about the same length as the other sections. However, it was my favorite because it concisely explains their findings as well as what they could still not figure out. They found that in developing countries child labor is closer to low intensity activities. It's more scores and doing housework and farm work which we wouldn't think of as child labor because we do it all the time. We always have friends and family helping out at our local bakeries and family-owned businesses. They also found that it does affect a child's school attendance but it didn't affect their health. And they found that the main reason why was because in grade school they mainly taught you about farming and agriculture and things of that nature versus going further in school they didn't teach you the basics so there was no need for it anymore. They also found that a child who is more likely to do child labor young is more likely to be a wage worker when they're older.
References:
Beegle, K., Dehejia, R., Gatti, R. (Fall, 2009). Why should we care about child labor?
The education, labor market, and health consequences of child labor. Journal of human resources. Vol. 44, No. 4 pp. 871-88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20648923

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