Summary: Poverty and Africa Child Labour Essay example

Submitted By nirojiniA
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Pages: 3

“Critically assess the claim that it is high demand, which is responsible for such a large number of children worldwide being engaged in child labour.”

What are the demands that lead to child labour?
Market demands:
Public growing needs for goods and services.
Solved by reducing the cost of production (land, labour, capital, enterprise)
Microeconomic labour model (Fig1): labour supply and demand are both functions of the real wage. As the real wage falls labour becomes cheap in relation to the goods produced thus a companies increase in profit by hiring more workers for lower wage and increasing output.

Non- Pecuniary demands: “nimble fingers hypothesis”
The demand for labourers who are:
Alert
Innocent
Willing
Naïve
Do not join trade unions or agitate for their rights

Childs Household demands:
Child labour is certainly a symptom of poverty as it creates an economic vulnerability amongst lower socioeconomic households. (Fig2)
“Theory of economic vulnerability”: (2 proposals)
1. A child’s involvement in school, work and leisure is decided by the family to maximise their present and future wellbeing.
Takes into consideration how the culture and societal values may affect the value placed on the contribution of schooling and work.
2. Child labour is aimed at purely satisfying the current needs of the household whilst education is an investment in future income.

This hypothetical framework clearly highlights poverty as the main constituent of the demand for child labour within a lower socioeconomic household. In order to meet the demands of basic needs (shelter, food and water) households sacrifice their future welfare and focus on their current economic vulnerability. As a result these children will enter adulthood with no skill to acquire a decent job and shall remain in the state of economic vulnerability. (Fig3) The high demand for child labour within these families reduces productive workers in adulthood and constrains economic growth.

{Odisha, India}- case study
Socioeconomic parameters:
Religion (Fig4): The Hindu sector is dominant as they are from the costal areas, which lag behind, in the overall development process. The urbanised areas have lower percentage of child labour, as parents prefer the education of their children rather than sending them to work for short-term benefit.
Caste
Income (Fig5)

The poverty in Odisha stands at 35.7% whilst the urban states remain at 17.3 %. The lack of investment into future welfare in odisha is showing a negative impact on the 40% child labour. In some odisha, education is mostly not affordable, or is found to be inadequate. Some parents also feel