Child Labor’s Link with Literacy and Poverty in Pakistan

Child Labor’s Link with Literacy and Poverty in Pakistan

Imran Ashraf Toor*

Abstract

In developing countries, children have long been largely ignored in public policy-making and the development of program strategies for improving their welfare. The complex issue of child labor is a developmental issue worth investigating. The notion that children are being exploited and forced into labor, while not receiving education crucial to development, concerns many people. This study focuses on child labor in Pakistan with two main objectives. We first estimate the prevalence of child labor in the 100 districts of Pakistan and then examine the hypothesis that child labor is significantly higher in districts that have a higher incidence of poverty and lower level of educational attainment. The results show that child labor has a negative relationship with the literacy rate both 10-14 year age and 15 years and above. There is a negative but insignificant relationship with per capita income and Deprivation Index in the case of male child labor. The study proved that literacy rate and per capita income has influenced negatively on female child labor.

I. Introduction

In developing countries, children have long been largely ignored in public policy-making and the development of program strategies for improving their welfare. However, this situation is beginning to change; Governments as well as international development agencies have started increasingly to focus attention on the welfare of children. The World Summit for Children held in 1990 epitomized this realization and reaffirmed the collective commitment to changing the situation[1]. Presently, child labor is one of the chronic issues of children in the modern world.

The complex issue of child labor is a developmental issue worth investigating. The notion that children are being exploited and forced into labor, while not receiving education crucial to development, concerns many people....