• Regional crisis and recovery

Regional crisis and recovery

Although lower than other developing countries at a similar stage of development, the problem of child labour in Indonesia is significant. Child labour perpetuates poverty. The link between current child labour and future poverty appears to be a lack of adequate and appropriate education. Children who spend a significant amount of their time working have less opportunity to obtain a proper education. This reduces their ability to get a good job as an adult and climb out of poverty. Furthermore, it is likely that their children will also have to work because of poverty. This study aims to assess the link between poverty, school, and work for children in Indonesia

The paper begins by exploring the profile of child labour using data collected from 12,000 households in 100 villages across Indonesia. Characteristics that are examined include age, gender, education and gender of the head of households, income and location. The authors find that the profile of child labour mirrors the profile of poverty, confirming evidence from other countries that there is a strong link between child labour and poverty. Next the paper analyses the trade-off between school and work for children. This is done by comparing the school enrolment status of children who work and who do not work, then examining the amount of time allocated for work by children who work full-time and who work part-time. Finally the role of poverty in influencing children to drop out of school and take up work is assessed.

The authors find that:

• working does not always completely eliminate a child’s opportunity to obtain a formal education, as only half of working children do not attend school
• the more severe the poverty, the higher the probability of a child taking up full time work at the expense of school
• a proportion of children who come from poor households can still attend school by taking part-time work to pay for their education – this implies that banning these children from working will not be of assistance

The authors conclude that in the long run the most effective policy for reducing the incidence of child labour is through poverty reduction. They recommend short term policies that can be utilized to help reduce child labour:

• access to education for children from poor families should be made easier and cheaper through building schools in the vicinity of where the poor live or subsidising the children from poor families to attend school
• efforts should be made to improve the quality of education to increase the rate of return to education and reduce the incentive for households to send children to work

Summary originally provided by GDNet, an Eldis content partner

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend