Child Labor: Parents Live through Their Children

Abstract

Child labor is a big problem in developing countries. It creates opportunity to them and threat to the developed countries due to free trading, competitions and globalization. The children are working in various occupations to produce commodities, engage in economic activities that are detrimental to their health and education. It reduces human capital formation of children. Yet there is no study to analyze the earning of the child workers in handloom industry. Hence this paper investigates the expenditure of the households and earning of the working children in handloom industry. Based on the analysis of primary data collected from the field survey of 327 households engaged in handloom industry of Ramna Etbar Nagar of Domkal Block, a village of Murshidabad district within the state of West Bengal, India, we find that the children give up their entire earning to parents for survival of their family. Thus the parents live through their children.