Why child labour? Evidences from homebased carpet weaving industry of Kashmir

Aasif Hussain Nengroo and Gulam Mohammad Bhat

Children and Youth Services Review, 2017, vol. 79, issue C, 50-56

Abstract: Child labour is a multi-faceted problem. When we hear about child labour, generally we think of market work, i.e. children employed in mines and factories. Yet only small portion of child labour are engaged in market work particularly in developing countries like ours. Those children who are working in household industries are often excluded by researchers and policy planners. Thus leaving us with a limited knowledge about the possible causes of child labour in the home based industries like carpet weaving in Jammu and Kashmir state. To fill this gap, an attempt is made in the present study to analyse various determinants of child labour in the carpet weaving industry of Kashmir, so that necessary measures can be suggested for its reduction. Data has been collected from a sample of 960 sampled households with the help of interview schedules from four selected districts of Kashmir Valley. Our results shows that low socio-economic status i.e. low income of the family, illiteracy of household head and large size of the family force the children to enter into the labour market at their tender age. Further, we found because of growing educated unemployment problem in the state, parents prefer to employ their children in the labour market instead of schooling. The study suggests that child labour can be reduced if parents are compensated equal to the earnings of their children and their educational cost.

Keywords: Child labour; Carpet weaving; Family size; Parents; Household income; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740916304467
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:79:y:2017:i:c:p:50-56

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.05.032

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().