History Of Child Labor

According to the International Labor Organization ( ILO), about 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working in developing countries, with 8.4 million involved in especially hazardous work including prostitution, soldiering, forced and bonded labor, and other illicit activities.
Out of that 250 million, at least 120 million work full time. Sixty-one percent are in Asia, 32 % in
Africa, and 7% in Latin America. From this statistics it can be said that many of these children have no hope of benefiting from the booming global economy. Children are deprived of their right of getting education and contributing to their human capital accumulation. In addition to being an economic issue, child labor has important psychological and

It is generally difficult for children who have early left school to return even if the economic situation has improved.
Still, worldwide agriculture is the largest employer of child labor. Vast majority of child labor is found in settings and informal urban economy. Thus poverty and lack of schools are
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considered as the primary cause of child labor. However, looking at the history of child labor, it is evident that the incidence of child labor in the world decreased from 25% to 10% between 1960 and
2003, according to the World Bank. Nevertheless, the total number of child laborers remains high, with UNICEF and ILO acknowledging an estimated 250 million children aged 5-17 worldwide who are involved as child labor in 2013. There can be many factors that could have an impact on the child labor reduction; however, one of the factors many scholars believe that has a major influence on child labor in most developing countries is migrants’ remittances.
The ongoing growth of migration and its massive levels lead to high levels of remittances.
According to the Statistics these transfers are increasing continuously, especially for developing countries. Since 2002, remittances to developing countries have increased more than two times.

This is just the official statistics and the actual remittances that take place through both official and unofficial channels are much higher than the official remittances.
Remittances through informal channels could add at least 590 % to the globally recorded flows (
World Bank).
There is growing evidence that there exists a link between remittances sent to home countries by migrants and child labor. According to the United Nations Population Division’s estimation, in 2010
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about 214 million people, or roughly 3.1 percent of the world’s population, lived outside their country of birth of citizenship. Neoclassical theory states that people migrate because of poor governance and limited job opportunity in their country and for the search of better job opportunities. Referring to this theory and taking into consideration the fact that in most of the developing countries the household earnings are low and migration of family members can provide a source of income, it can be said that a large percentage of these individuals migrate to improve living standards fro their families back home. Studies by World Bank, International Labor Organization, International Labor Migration