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Introduction

The term "Child Labor" can be used to refer to any child who is below 18 years of age and is working for pay. However, there is no universal definition of child labor, with various organizations / countries defining it in different ways.
As per the ILO (International Labour Organization), an economically active child is the one who works at least 1 hour a week and all 5-11 years old economically active children are considered child laborers. On the other hand, an economically active 12-14 years old is considered a child laborer only if he/she performs at least 14 hours of non-hazardous work per week, or at least 1 hour of hazardous work per week. However, this definition underestimates (as we will show in the following sections) child labor by implying child labor to result in a marketable product. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates the number of working children in the world in the age-group of 5-14 years to be 250 million, with the number of working children in India being anywhere between 13 and 44 million, depending on how one defines child labour and the manner in which the data is used.

The activities which children in developing countries can be engaged in are of primarily two types. They can be either working (helping in family-owned business or a factory, etc.) or they can be helping in domestic chores (cooking, washing, babysitting, etc.). They may also be engaged in both types of work simultaneously or engaged in one or both of the types along with school education. Detailed anthropological studies in Kerala, India, have lead Nieuwenhuys (1994) to conclude that work within the household is not any the less demanding or less important for families than market work. Thus, in this article, we will assume child labor to consider non-paid works (like household chores) as well as paid work, with the age limit being assumed to be 14 years. As we will see in subsequent sections, for all practical purposes, this can be assumed to define child labor in developing countries.

In this article, we will discuss and analyze the various determinants of child labor, with a focus on developing countries (in particular, India). We will also discuss the ill-effects of child labor on a child's overall long-term development. We will review the work done in this field at national and international level in the past decade, discuss their relevance to Indian context, besides analyzing their implications for policy makers.

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Dr. Shreyas Goswami and Vineet Jain are the First Year MBA (BM) Students at XLRI, Jamshedpur. While Shreyas is a Doctor by profession, Vineet is a Civil Engineer from Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi University.