Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy by Benjamin Powell

Author:Benjamin Powell [Powell, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.1 Percent of economically active children employed by sector.

Protests against sweatshops that use child labor or trade sanctions such as the Child Labor Deterrence Act assume that ending child labor in sweatshops by taking away the option to work in a factory will, on net, reduce child labor. Evidence on child labor in countries that have sweatshops indicates that they are wrong. It is not a few “bad apple” firms exploiting children in factories. Child labor is common. Moreover, sweatshops and manufacturing are not where most children work. Most work in agriculture or service sector jobs. These other sectors are not necessarily safer, either. Child-labor surveys show that 12 percent of children working in agriculture report injuries, compared with 9 percent of those who work in manufacturing.11 If children lose their jobs in export manufacturing, the alternative for most is not some comfortable time in school but another job in a lower-growth, lower-skill sector of the economy. Similar to their adult counterparts, we do not help Third World children by taking options away from them; we help them only when their options are expanded. Chapter 9 will discuss some marginal differences activists could make in expanding their options, but the next section of this chapter explains the main way that child labor is eradicated.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.