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About the author

Iftikhar Ahmed is a Development Economist having worked at the


International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva during three decades (19742004) in the Employment Sector for many years having led the research
programme on technology, environment and employment with a focus on
gender issues. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the International
Labour Review and Director of the ILOs Bureau of Publications. His other
ILO assignments included that of the Action Research Coordinator at the
ILOs International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)
and Director of the ILO Office in Jakarta, Indonesia. Prior to joining the ILO,
he was a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Iowa State University of Science and
Technology, United States, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development
Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, and Associate Professor of
Economics, Dhaka University, Bangladesh. He is the author of Technological
Change and Agrarian Structure: A study of Bangladesh (Geneva, ILO, 1981)
co-editor (with Bill H. Kinsey) of Farm Equipment Innovations in Eastern and
Central Southern Africa (Aldershot, United Kingdom, Gower, 1984), editor of
Technology and Rural Women: Conceptual and Empirical Issues (London,
George Allen & Unwin, 1985), co-editor (with Vernon W. Ruttan) of
Generation and Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations: The Role of
Institutional Factors (Aldershot, United Kingdom, Gower, 1988), editor of
Biotechnology: A Hope or a Threat? (London, Macmillan, 1992), and coeditor (with Jacobus A. Doeleman) of Beyond Rio: The environmental Crisis
and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Third World (London, Macmillan, 1995
and New York, St. Martins Press, 1996).

Dedication
Dedicated to the real child labour specialists, the 168 million working
children of the world and to the authors three more-fortunate schoolgoing grandchildren, Amina, Zahra and Zain.

Iftikhar Ahmed

VOICES
AND
WILL

OF

THE WORKING

CHILDREN
THEIR PARENTS:
ANY ONE LISTEN?

With contributions by:


Muhammad Quamrul Hasan
and
Mohammad Mahbub Pervez

Copyright Iftikhar Ahmed (2015)


The right of Iftikhar Ahmed to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for
damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 756 0 (Paperback)


ISBN 978 1 78455 758 4 (Hardback)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain


6

Voices of the working children and their parents:


Will any one listen?
Abstract
The voices of nearly three hundred and sixty thousand children (boys and
girls, 5-14 years of age) and over one hundred and sixty four thousand parents
(mothers and fathers) from both urban and rural areas of 25 countries spread
across three developing continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America
(including two countries from Eastern Europe) have been pooled together in
this book to analyse the childrens and their parents own experiences,
perceptions, priorities and aspirations on the multiple dimensions of the
phenomenon of child labour. Data was collected through national child labour
surveys carried out during 1999 and 2011.
Striking similarities have been noted between the childrens and parents
mindsets across countries with diverse social, economic, cultural and political
contexts. According to both the children and the parents, children work for a
combination of reasons such as, in order to (a) supplement household income,
(b) assist household enterprise, (c) earn money to start childrens own
business or meet personal expenses and (d) gain work experience or acquire
skills or learn work ethics. Remarkably, no gender differences are noted in
their responses, although a rural/urban divide has been observed with respect
to the first reason.
Similarly, both parents and children are equally afraid that (a) household
living standard will decline and (b) household enterprise cannot operate fully
if the children stopped working, such a fear being more significant for rural
residents. In addition, parents from several countries fear children will not
acquire any work ethic or practical skills if they stopped working. However,
not all parents think alike; paradoxically, a good proportion of parents from a
set of countries from all three developing continents at the same time believe
that children stopping work does not affect the household welfare in any way.
A very high proportion of parents (more of the mothers from Latin America
as compared to those of Asia and Africa) and children (a larger proportion of
girls) aspire for the children to go to school full-time in the future. A
relatively higher proportion of children (more of boys and rural children)
aspire to work full-time now and in the future compared to the parents (more
of the fathers) who aspire for their children to do so. There are also some
parents and children from several countries whose aspirations for the children
include childrens combining part-time work with part-time education and
completion of education/training/ acquisition of skills before starting work.
7

Reasons advanced by parents and children for the latter not attending school
include cost of education (higher proportion of mothers and rural parents),
problems of learning achievement (lower proportion of girls but higher
proportion of rural children) and children being engaged in economic
activities (a higher proportion of girls engaged in household chores). A
negligible proportion of both parents and children stated that family does not
allow children to go to school. As regards education provision and child
labour links, contrary to most existing empirical evidence, a negligible
proportion of parents and children gave the quality of education or the
distance of schools (a more acute problem in rural areas) as a reason for
children not attending school or for their engaging in work.
As for the children engaged in wage work, vast majority of the children (more
of the girls and rural children) universally hand over their entire earnings to
their parents.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
15
Notes on the author and contributors
16
Authors preface
18
1 Introduction
20
Explosive recent growth in child labour literature
20
Focus of ongoing programmes
20
Childrens and their parents own perceptions: A major gap
21
Benefits of special child labour surveys
21
Demonising parents
22
Aims, objectives and scope of the study
23
Issues addressed
24
Methodology, sources of data and country coverage
24
Source of data
25
The child labour survey methodology and geographical coverage
25
Selection and number of respondents
26
Discrepancies in the number of respondents
27
Statistical analysis
28
Significance of the study in the current global socio-economic context
30
Explaining the puzzle: Declining child labour amidst growing unemployment
30
Vulnerable employment awaits working children
31
Design of the book
32
2 Why do our children work?
38
Opening remarks
38
Parents perceptions
38
Parents views across countries converge
38
Parents perceptions unaltered by gender
39
Do urban and rural environments influence parents views?
40
Childrens perceptions
40
Solidarity in childrens views across countries
40
Boys and girls think alike
41
A rural/urban divide
42
Do parents mindsets conflict with childrens perceptions?
43
Comparison of parents and childrens perception across countries covered by same
survey
43
Gender-differences prevail
44
Rural/urban divide exists
44
Main Conclusion
44
3 If children stop working
57
Introductory remarks
57
Parents perceptions
57
Parents views across countries
57
Gender differences
58
Rural/urban divide exists
58
Childrens perceptions: Bolivia and Cambodia
59
Parents and childrens perceptions identical in Cambodia
60
Summing up
61
9

If only we had a choice


68
Caring parents: Honduras and the Philippines
68
Childrens aspirations now
68
Childrens unfulfilled dreams across countries
69
Girls higher preference for schooling
69
Rural/urban divide
70
Caring parents in Honduras and the Philippines
70
Parents aspirations for the children in the future
71
Caring parents aspirations for the future
71
The inter-continental gender divide: Latino mothers are more caring
71
Rural/urban divide in the parents aspirations for the future
72
Childrens wish list: A mixed blessing
72
Girls wiser
73
Rural/urban differences
73
Parents do care but children are ready to sacrifice
74
Concluding comments
75
Parents and childrens aspirations now
75
Parents and Childrens aspirations in the future
75
5 We want to go to school
89
Introduction
89
Parents arguments
89
Affordability and learning ability
89
Mothers disagree
90
Rural/urban divide
90
Childrens predicaments
91
Views across countries
91
Tradition-bound but smarter girls
92
Rural/urban divide: Mixed scenario
92
Parents and childrens views compared: Bolivia and the Philippines
93
Conclusions: Some myths about education child labour links
94
Overall Conclusions
94
Does market work interfere with childrens school attendance?
95
Does lower educational achievement and attainment boost child labour?
96
Does combining school with work adversely affect the academic achievement of
children?
96
Is there a link between education provision and child labour?
96
6 Who owns the fruits of our labour?
106
Powerless children
106
Boys and girls equally vulnerable
106
Rural children less fortunate
106
Summing up
107
No significant gender differences were noted in the 9 countries
107
7 Conclusions and overview of findings
112
Looking through the prism
112
Overview of empirical findings
112
Priorities of the children and parents: Who benefits?
113
To supplement household income or to meet expenses
113
To assist household enterprise/family business
113
To earn money to start childrens own business
114
To gain work experience/learning skills or work ethics
114
Educational quality and distance from school
114
10

Stop child labour: A slogan or a commitment


Fall in living standards
A blow to household enterprise
Loss of work ethic
The good news: Household not affected
Unfulfilled dreams: Parents and childrens aspirations
Go to school full-time
Work full-time
Combining education with work
Complete Education before working
The truth about school attendance
Financial problems
Academic performance
Children engaged in economic activities
Is family an obstacle?
Discouraged by distance from school/quality of school
Who controls the purse?
Concluding comments and policy response
Household as the unit of analysis
Household economic priorities perpetuating child labour
A silver lining: The thirst for learning
Bridging the rural/urban divide
Social norms: A glass ceiling for the girls
Parents unjustly demonised
Risks of empowering children
Confidence or powerlessness
Knowledge is power
Cooperation or conflict
In a nut shell: the policy package
Relevance of existing policies and programmes: Carrot and Stick
Advocacy Campaigns
Income replacement programmes
Flexible school programmes
Reintegration projects
Conditional transfers
National legal prohibition of child labour
Trade sanctions and labour standards
Concluding remarks
Bibliography

11

115
115
115
116
116
116
116
117
117
118
118
118
119
119
119
120
120
120
120
121
121
121
121
122
122
123
123
124
124
126
126
127
127
127
128
128
129
130
141

List of Tables and illustration


Tables
Table
1.1
Table
1.2
Table
2.1
Table
2.2
Table
2.3
Table
2.4
Table
2.5
Table
2.6
Table
2.7
Table
2.8
Table
2.9
Table
3.1
Table
3.2
Table
3.3
Table
3.4
Table
3.5
Table
4.1
Table
4.2
Table
4.3
Table

National Census and Statistical Bureaux conducting the child


labour surveys by Country, title, type and year of survey
Number of parents and children (5-14 years of age) included
in the data set by Country, gender and rural/urban residence
Parents views on why children work by country (percentage)

35

Parents views on why children work by country and gender


(percentage)
Parents views on why children work by country and region
(percentage)
Childrens views on why they work by country (percentage)

46

Childrens views on why they work by country and gender


(percentage)
Childrens views on why they work by country and region
(percentage)
Parents and childrens views on why they work by country
(percentage)
Parents and childrens views on why they work by country
and gender (percentage)
Parents and childrens views on why they work by country
and region (percentage)
Parents views of the consequences on the household of their
children stopping work by country (percentage)
Parents views on the consequences on the household of their
children stopping work by country and gender (percentage)
Parents views on the consequences on the household of their
children stopping work by country and region (percentage)
Childrens views of the consequences on the household of
their stopping work by gender and region: Cambodia 2001
(percentage)
Parents and childrens views of the consequences on the
household of their stopping work by gender and region:
Cambodia 2001 (percentage)
Parents aspirations for their children now by country, gender
and region (percentage)
Childrens aspirations now by country (percentage)

50

Childrens aspirations now by country and gender


(percentage)
Childrens aspirations now by country and region

79

12

37
45

48
49

52
53
54
56
63
64
65
66

67

77
78

80

4.4
Table
4.5
Table
4.6
Table
4.7
Table
4.8
Table
4.9
Table
4.10
Table
4.11
Table
4.12
Table
5.1
Table
5.2
Table 5.3
Table 5.4
Table 5.5
Table 5.6
Table 5.7

Table 6.1
Table 6.2
Table 6.3
Table.7.1

Table A.1

(percentage)
Aspirations now of parents and children by country, gender
and region (percentage)
Parents aspirations for their children in the future by country
(percentage)
Parents aspirations for their children in the future by country
and gender (percentage)
Parents aspirations for their children in the future by country
and region (percentage)
Childrens aspirations for their future by country (percentage)

81
82
83
84
85

Childrens aspirations for their future by country and gender


(percentage)
Childrens aspirations for their future by country and region
(percentage)
Parents and childrens aspirations for the future by country
(percentage)
Reasons given by parents for their children not attending
school by country (percentage)
Reasons given by parents for their children not attending
school by country and gender (percentage)

86

Reasons given by parents for their children not attending


school by country and region (percentage)
Reasons given by children for their not attending school
by country (percentage)
Reasons given by children for their not attending school
by country and gender (percentage)
Reasons given by children for their not attending school
by country and region (percentage)
Reasons given by parents and children for their not
attending school by Country, gender and region:
Philippines 2001 (percentage)
Childrens report on recipients of their earnings by
country (percentage)
Childrens report on recipients of their earnings by
country and gender (percentage)
Childrens report on recipients of their earnings by
country and region (percentage)
A matrix of parents and childrens mindsets on issues
relating to child labour across countries by gender and
rural/urban residence
Questions posed to the parents and children (5-17 years of
age) by country and dimension of child labour

100

Illustration
13

87
88
98
99

101
102
104
105

108
109
111
131

138

Figure 1.1

Number of actions reported under Convention Nos. 138


and 182 by type, 1999-2005, 2006-2009 and 2010-2013

14

36

Acknowledgements

The study took into account the valuable comments provided on the initial
draft by two anonymous referees from ILOs International Programme on the
Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and the helpful suggestions for
improving the text subsequently received from Marlous de Milliano of the
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, Italy which focuses on
childrens rights.
Without the enthusiasm and insistence of my friend Muhammad Muqtada and
without the support of my tennis partner and eminent economist, Guy
Standing and my mentor Ajit Bhalla, this book would never have been
published.
The author is grateful to Md. Kawsarul Alam Sarker who undertook the
tedious work of placing the entire manuscript on the word processor.

15

Notes on the author and contributors


Iftikhar Ahmed is a Development Economist having worked at the
International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva during three decades (19742004) in the Employment Sector for many years having led the research
programme on technology, environment and employment with a focus on
gender issues. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the International
Labour Review and Director of the ILOs Bureau of Publications. His other
ILO assignments included that of the Action Research Coordinator at the
ILOs International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)
and Director of the ILO Office in Jakarta, Indonesia. Prior to joining the ILO,
he was a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Iowa State University of Science and
Technology, United States, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development
Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, and Associate Professor of
Economics, Dhaka University, Bangladesh. He is the author of Technological
Change and Agrarian Structure: A study of Bangladesh (Geneva, ILO, 1981)
co-editor (with Bill H. Kinsey) of Farm Equipment Innovations in Eastern and
Central Southern Africa (Aldershot, United Kingdom, Gower, 1984), editor of
Technology and Rural Women: Conceptual and Empirical Issues (London,
George Allen & Unwin, 1985), co-editor (with Vernon W. Ruttan) of
Generation and Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations: The Role of
Institutional Factors (Aldershot, United Kingdom, Gower, 1988), editor of
Biotechnology: A Hope or a Threat? (London, Macmillan, 1992), and coeditor (with Jacobus A. Doeleman) of Beyond Rio: The environmental Crisis
and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Third World (London, Macmillan, 1995
and New York, St. Martins Press, 1996).
Muhammad Quamrul Hasan worked as a Consultant Statistician with
UNESCO, UNDP and UNICEF Asia and Pacific Regional Office after having
served as a statistician/lecturer at the United Nations Statistical Institute for
Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) in Japan where he was involved in national
statistical capacity building. Before joining SIAP in 2004, he worked as the
Systems and Database Administrator at the Statistical Information and
Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC) of the International
Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) at the International
Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva for four years where he formulated
strategy and established the child labour statistical data archive. He was the
main author of the child labour survey data processing manual and
contributed to the manual on survey data collection published by the ILO. He
was a member of the ILOs team on global estimation of child labour in 2002.
Prior to joining the ILO, he worked as senior systems analyst at the UK Data
Archive at the University of Essex and as an Associate Professor at the
University of Rajshahi (Bangladesh).
16

Mohammad Mahbub Pervez is a statistician/data management expert,


currently employed with the Bangladesh National Food Policy Capacity
Strengthening Programme being implemented by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Prior to that he developed the
Management Information System under Advancing Sustainable
Environmental Health (ASEH) Project of the international NGO, Water Aid
Bangladesh. He served as the Monitoring and Evaluation In-charge/Database
Specialist under the Food Security Enhancement Initiative of World Vision
Bangladesh during 2000-2006. He also made contributions to data
management for International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Bangladesh,
Practical Action (former ITDG) Bangladesh and Action Aid Bangladesh (for
one of its livelihood surveys).

17

Authors preface
The author of this study was inspired by the loud and clear voices of the poor,
the non-unionized industrial workers and the insecure inhabitants of this
planet to similarly listen to the voices of the powerless working children and
their desperate parents from Third World countries.
Essentially, the study assembles and analyses the views, experiences priorities
and aspirations of 359,921 boys and girls and their parents (both mothers and
fathers) numbering 164,271 from 25 countries spread over all three
developing continents and Eastern Europe across diverse, social, cultural,
economic and political contexts through special child labour surveys
conducted by the national census and statistical bureaux of each country with
the technical support of the ILO.
The credibility and authenticity of information secured by direct interviews of
nearly 360,000 boys and girls and over 164,000 parents stands out in stark
contrast with the anecdotal accounts presented by children at international
conferences hand- picked by the organizers.
Therefore, the author would strongly urge policy makers and practitioners to
read this book to reflect on the results and respond to the voices raised by the
helpless working children and their caring parents world-wide.
Equally importantly, the author recommends the translation of the book into
the local vernaculars of the 25 countries covered by this study providing a
mechanism for the children and the parents to hear one anothers voice and
discover their common, mutually-supportive mindsets and the absence of an
adversarial relationship. This sharing of knowledge within ones own
household will certainly empower them to collectively fight their own battle
against child labour.
The author recognises that the data generated by this study will not in itself
end child labour, but he firmly believes that, at the very least, this book can
make progress towards the elimination of child labour possible by providing
empirical evidence to drive action, identify gaps in policies, influence
decision-makers, target investment and interventions to reach out to the most
vulnerable children and their families.

Narayan, Deepa; Petesch, Patti (eds.): Voices of the poor: From many lands (New York,
Oxford University Press, and Washington, D.C., World Bank, 2002); Anker, Richard "People's
Security Survey: An outline of methodology and concepts" in International Labour Review;
(Geneva, ILO) Vol. 141, No. 4, 2002; and Fredon, Richard B.; Rogers, Joel: What workers
want (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1999).
18

The book represents an effort to fully utilise the data set generated by the
child labour surveys.
This book could also be seen as a part of a recent trend of data-focused social
and economic analysis of major global issues such as inequality of wealth in
the worlds leading economies2.1
Finally, the age of internet communication has facilitated the incorporation of
inputs and the synthesis of contributions of the author and the two statistical
analysts spread over three corners of the world (Switzerland, Bangladesh and
the UK) into this multi-authored book.

See for instance, Piketty, Thomas: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge,
Mass., Harvard University Press, 2014). No other book on economics in recent
history received such a glowing initial reception as the Piketty book did world-wide.
19

Introduction

Explosive recent growth in child labour literature


An amazing recent flood of literature on child labour, based on empirical
work, can be attributed to a number of factors. Firstly, child labour is
increasingly viewed as a human rights issue. Secondly, globalization
(primarily international trade) increased awareness of the existence of child
labour that hit the conscience of consumers in rich countries of cheap products
imported from the Third World perpetuating child labour. Thirdly, a growing
concern about the impact on long-term economic growth of child labour by
affecting human capital development. Fourthly, greater recent availability of
national representative household survey data has opened up opportunities for
empirically investigating the complex multiple dimensions of child labour.
Therefore, it is little surprising that nearly 150 journal articles on child labour
were published within a span of the first 5 years of this century alone, when a
meagre 6 articles on this subject were published in the decade of the 1980s
with substantial jump in the contribution to 65 articles in the subsequent
decade of the 1990s (Edmonds, 2008).

Focus of ongoing programmes


On the other hand, at the practical level, it is by now widely recognized that
child labour reduction policies and action programmes drawing on insights
obtained from the above research are not implemented in a vacuum. Based on
the results of the academic work, they are formulated by bureaucrats, planners
and development practitioners and implemented by government agencies and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in different cultural, political and
socio--economic settings without taking into account the location-specific
social norms of the family or the perceptions of working children and the
mindsets of their parents where such information is available at the countrylevel, for instance, those generated by the ILOs National Child Labour
Surveys.
If our main goal is to assist working children and their parents to succeed in
their own efforts to eliminate child labour, then what can be more important
than listening to the voices of the children and their parents themselves.
Therefore, this cross-country study is based on the data generated by the ILO
through its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour
20

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