Child Work in Developing Countries: Revisiting the Differences and Similarities Between Income-Generating and Care and Domestic Work

Elena Camilletti, Franziska Gassmann, Wim Groot and Bruno Martorano

Journal of Development Studies, 2025, vol. 61, issue 4, 556-580

Abstract: Child work is still widely prevalent in many countries: it refers to both income-generating activities and unpaid care and domestic activities. However, the existing literature and international statistical standards either aggregate these two forms of work or focus exclusively on income-generating work. In this paper, we show the differences and similarities in the prevalence and determinants of paid and unpaid child work using data from nationally representative household surveys for 34 developing countries, representing over 900 million people. We find that across countries, care and domestic work is more prevalent among children and adolescents aged five to 17 years, but less intensive than income-generating work. The age and sex of the child matters. Gender is diametrically associated to the two forms of work, while the likelihood of both increases with age. We observe variation in the sign and magnitude of caregiver and household-level coefficients between countries, however in most countries household composition factors proxying care supply have opposite effects on the two forms of child work, while household infrastructure affects both forms of work in the same direction. The findings call for distinctly measuring the two forms of child work and addressing their respective determinants through context-specific interventions.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2024.2434253

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