Far
from a product of the Industrial Revolution, child labor has existed
since the beginning of time. When the productivity of labor is
hopelessly low, parents naturally think of children as economic actors
who can contribute to the well-being of their families. Without their
children’s participation in the family’s work, the entire
household could suffer terrible privation. This is a fact of life in
poor, low-productivity societies that no "progressive"
legislation can wish away. As Anna Krueger writes, "The issue of
child labor is vexing: there are legitimate issues of intolerable
working conditions, but employment of children may provide food that
prevents a family from starving. In some instances, also, it may
provide girls with an alternative to forced early marriages."
Even the International Labor Organization conceded in a 1997 report,
"Poverty, however, emerges as the most compelling reason why
children work. Poor households need the money, and children commonly
contribute around 20 to 25 percent of family income. Since by
definition poor households spend the bulk of their income on food, it
is clear that the income provided by working children is critical to
their survival."
To
say that legislation can bring about an end to child labor is akin to
saying that someone’s fever could be cured by dousing his
thermometer in ice. The only way child labor can come to a genuine end
is when the need for it has dwindled or disappeared. In societies
where the productivity of labor has risen sufficiently – in other
words, when the labor of fewer people is now necessary to perform the
same amount of work as before – the contribution of children to the
productive process no longer carries the same urgency. In wealthy
societies like these, parents have the luxury of keeping their
children at home, and in our own case, even providing them with over
twelve years of formal education by age 18. Again, this outcome could
not have been wished into existence. It had to be brought about
through a dramatic increase in the productivity of labor – in other
words, by the capital investment that occurs on the unhampered market.
Those
who, out of a combination of legitimate humanitarian concern and
unfortunate economic ignorance, attempt to accelerate this process by
means of legislation prohibiting child labor only add to the very
misery they claim to be alleviating. It is only because such
humanitarians have spent their lives in the fantastically wealthy
capitalist societies of the West that they could have failed to
realize that dire poverty, which makes child labor inevitable, has
been the lot of the entire human race for the great majority of its
history. The fact is, legislation or no legislation, the typical
family in a very poor country still needs the income the child’s
work brings. If the law prevents their children from being employed
legally, then – supposing they do not want to starve – they are
likely to employ their children illegally, where conditions are almost
certain to be far worse. In fact, in exceedingly poor societies where
liberal humanitarians have prohibited child labor, it is not uncommon
to find that the children wind up in prostitution – hardly an
improvement in their welfare, to say the least. In fact, Oxfam, the
British charity, recently reported that when factory owners in
Bangladesh gave in to pressure to fire child laborers, thousands
starved or went into prostitution.