Impact of Globalization on Child Labor-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Impact of globalization on child labor. Answer: Introduction The phenomenon of child labor has been seen in all regions of many parts in the world. It is a common practice that is observed in almost all parts of the world especially in the developing nations. However, the rate of the practice of child labor has decreased with the growing world. The rates of child labor participation have decreased and this has been explained with the rate of economic growth. Many researchers have argued that the economic growth of a region has increased the amount of child labor in a region. The demand of child labor has increased in many countries. It mainly happened during the lack of the government. It has been seen in many regions that the labor markets served as a common reason of child labor. This report studies the link between the practice of child labor and globalization. The report puts forward the theory of the fact that globalization lead to the practice of child labor and more employment. The theoretical frame and the literature review are the mai n aspects of the study and that are included in the report. To explain the point in a more detailed form the report focuses on the cost model and the cross country effects of the impact of globalization. The report includes the findings of some issues related to child labor and addresses them in an effective manner. The report ends with a conclusion and effective recommendations that can be brought in order to improve the worst situation of child labor and the effects of the same. Child labor as an issue Child labor has remained a serious issue since a longer period of time in many places. It is considered as a difficult issue to resolve. It has been observed that in many factories and industries a huge amount of child has been appointed as labor. The child belonged to the poor and to resolve the issues of poverty at their own household the children had to work in many factors and other work places as labors. They were deprived from good education. The child working in many places work mainly to support their family or to pay for their own education. Depriving them from good income has led to some children seeking different, lower paid work and even the case of prostitutes comes to the forefront. The most usual factor of child labor is poverty. It had a global impact(Simas, Golsteijn, Huijbregts, Wood, Hertwich, 2014). There were many global movements that were arranged in order to eliminate the practice of child labor from the society. One of the most remarkable movements was the G lobal March Child Labor which included marches in many major cities around the world drawing the attention of the mass on a global ground. The main purpose of the movement was to grab the attention of the mass towards the evil effects of the practice of child labor and child slavery. It was referred to as the violation of one of the most important human rights(Wickramage, Weerawarna, Jayasekara, Pannala, Sumathipala, 2015). The theoretical frame and literature According to(Tuttle, 2015) this particular frame has been an attempt to portray the possibility of the reason behind the child labor with the reasons related to economicms. It has been identified that there are two dimensions of creating the child labor mechanism as both demand and supply side. The first and foremost dimension consists of reason that determine the child labor supply and it is defined as the result of the household decisions, sometimes it is the lack of the check of the government and sometimes it because of poverty. The second dimension consists of the factors that affect the want of the child labors and it involves the development of the economic growth dynamics. It has integration with the global economy. The duration of change of these factors serves as an important factor for the development of the effects of economic growth on the supply of child labor. (Laws, 2016). On the other hand(Kamata, 2016) argued that the level of income plays an important role in the factor of practicing child labor. There is a close relation between the practice of the child labor and the income of the household. It has been agued by many critics that the poverty of a household is one of the most factors in determining the child labor. The other set of critics argue that poverty forces the parents to send their children to work. The parents have no other alternative choice and this is the reason they force their child to go to work. It has been observed that whenever the society has been observed to be poor and of inequality there has been rise of child labor. The incidences of child seem to increase while the society is full of inequality and poverty. Therefore, the child labor has a negative relation with the economic development. It has been observed that the governments of developed countries who had good economic conditions had strict way of controlling the child labor. The government of developing nations often lacks resources to enforce the ban of child labor(Meardi Marginson, 2014). It has been observed that the concept of globalization might result in changing the duration of the decision of the factors which determines the supply of the children intending to be labors. The social and cultural norms turned to be more traditional in developing countries which turned to lead to a higher social acceptability of the child labor(Rauscher, Myers, Miller, 2016). In spite of this the consciousness level of parents inevitably converges to the global norms and global set of rules(Almeida Kassouf, 2016). As a result the parents would prefer to send their children to a school and education sectors rather than sending them to work. Therefore, the globalization has proved to be more effective in the regulations of the child labor and maintain the standards in the developing nations(Edward, 2017). Literature review According to(Cho, Fang, Tayur, Xu, 2014) the existing literature on the relationship between the globalization and child labor has focused on the economic aspects of globalization which includes the international trade. It can be argued that if an increase in international trade increases per capita income then in that case it is expected that the amount of child labor would decrease. There is a gap in such thought as there is an adverse situation that can arise due to this. It can be assumed that the international trade may also increase the demand for the unskilled labor which would tend to increase the practice of child labor(Islam Choe, 2013). Apart from the economic factor there is social globalization has an effect in the practice of the child labor. It majorly includes the social integration aspect of globalization(Locke, 2013). This is the transfer of information and personal contacts across national borders. While discussing about the child labor it can be mentioned that the social norms affect how acceptable the child labor is considered in order to explore the case where the parents might even have a positive attitude towards child labor. The critics thought that the social globalization had a great amount of role to play in order to reduce the incidents of child labor if the norms are against the child labor or in the other case it should be in favor of schooling and it is transmitted with greater amount of international integration and transactions. On the contrary the other critics like(Masten, 2014) argued that the social globalizations are however highly correlated with other economic variables which require to be more accounted for. The factor that is important to the critics in both empirical and theoretical research on child labor is the level of poverty. The increase in the economy tends to decrease the child labor. However, the researchers have mentioned that the social regulations and outrights bans of the practice of child labor are only successful in eradicating child labor if they are enforced in reality. The enforceability would be low if the socio-economic incentives for the child labor are strong enough(Jariego, 2017). It happens when there is not the case which might not be enforced. This particularly happens in the developing countries where the capacity of the state is comparatively low the priorities are on elsewhere. This is true in the case of the child labor as well(Kail, 2015). Models The following part of the paper argues the variables explaining the rates of the participation of the child labor in different countries and it argues for a reduced form of econometric equation to question the validity of the following relation. The report has included a table which shows the child labor participating rates of the developing countries and different factors that affects the child labor. As mentioned in the literature review of the report the most common measure of the child labor is the labor force participation of the children aged between the years 5 to 14 years. According to (Cuadros-Menaca, 2017) Child labor is one of the major issues in the developing countries because of the immense economic problems that cause hindrance to the socio cultural aspects of these countries. The strong association between income and trade is not uncommon and thus different sources indicate the key to the relation between income and child labor. The following association can also lead to a relation between trade and child labor. Figure 1 clearly shows the relationship between child labor and income. The strong co relation of these two different variables can be the cause of the endogeneity between income and child labor. (OKeefe, 2016) Figure 1- Relation between Child Labor and Trade Source-(Bah, 2014) Figure 2- Relation between Child Labor and Income Source- (Johnson Jr, 2014) Cross Country Evidence The proper exposure to international competition can result in more children going to school rather than participating in work. The following condition can be created only when a country opens itself up to such a competition. This will result in the creation of a large number of educated workers. The guidelines that have an aim to lower the mortality are most likely to reduce the problem of child labor (Bah, 2014). The researcher has impact of trade on child labor to get an idea of developing countries opening its doors to education for all. Some of the other variables that were considered in the research are skills of the labor force, health and income. Child labor is also measured by the rate of the participation of the labor force and the attendance rate of the children at the school. The open trade is determined by the ratio of the trade which is the amount of exports plus the amount of imports divided by the total gross domestic production. The health policy in the research is c onsidered to be the share of the public health expense in the gross domestic production of the country. The skill composition of the country is measured between the ages 15-65 years of the total workforce that have completed their secondary education. On the other hand skill composition factors are the result of the overall effects of the early educational policies of the government of the different countries that are considered in this report. Table 1 of the report has shown the fixed effects and the OSL estimates of the developing countries and the relation that is established between the conventional measure of trade and the other two alternative measures of child labor (Tsuyuhara, 2014). The skill composition rate has to be controlled in the report or else it could have no effect on the effective calculation of the child labor. The proportion of workers with completed primary as well as secondary education reflects a negative impact on the child labor. The more the share of the workers in the category of 10-14 labor participation rate the more is the higher percentage of people who received secondary education. This completely reduces the significance of the workers who have completed the primary education just because secondary education forms the basic criterion att the given point of time. Thus when the opposite happens in case the secondary education system of the country is not so developed, thus reducing its effec t. The following example is thus somewhat more favorable to globalization only if the ratio of the trade is replaced by the Sachs-Warner measure of openness. The open education policy of the governments in these countries reduces child labor drastically and helps in the overall development of the skilled workforce. The share of the working population with at least the primary education has less impact as because the dependent variable in such case is the primary school noon attendance rate (OKeefe, 2016). The following results are consistent with the theoretical considerations. The last section revolves around the other things or factors being all equal, international competitions reduce or at worst has no such key significance to child labor. However the most optimistic scenario of child labor is related to a more stringent policy of open education in the developing countries, the one that takes into consideration the factors which have a direct impact on the ways by which trade takes place rather than the original amount or the actual volume of the trade that takes place in these countries. As because the beneficial effects of trade and exposure comes through difference in relative price changes, it is not irrelevant whether or not the prices of the internal goods are under the control of the government or they are free to adjust themselves according to the international standards. The following is also not dependent on whether or not they are distorted by the quotas or the state monopolies or not (McQuade, 2014). Table 1- Developing Countries Dependents Source- (Bah, 2014) Table 2- Dependent Variables Source- (McQuade, 2014) Findings and Arguments Figure 3- Dependent and Independent Variables Source- (Johnson Jr, 2014) In table 1 given above the descriptive variables of the model discussed in this report is clearly highlighted. It is seen that the dependent variables of the child labor participation rate changes from 1% to 53%, the explanatory variable PCGDP changes in between 89 US dollars and 13989 US Dollars. On the other hand FDI changes in between 0.05% and 29.15% trade between 25% and 204% in the rural areas. While it changes from 7% to 93% in the developing countries (Ali, 2017). The calculation has been done using the estimation of OSL. In the initial step the researcher considered the straight model for calculation. There was negative linear relationship between child labor and the participation rate suggested as a sign of the parameter that calculated the income. The e-statistics in the calculation are significant at 0.01 levels. It can be seen that the FDI has a positive relation to child labor and trade which is stagnant at 0.01 levels (Ali, 2017). Conclusion There is no such empirical evidence on whether globalization increases the incidence of child labor. The different data as recorded in this report and the cross country evidence clearly shows that globalization can reduce child labor. However health policies and educational policies of the government of the developing countries can have a serious toll on the effect of child labor in these countries. The economic condition of these developing countries has a serious impact on child labor as because such a condition renders many families to engage their children to forced child labors to earn their living (McQuade, 2014). There are many cases where the family wanted to send their child to school but the disparity in income, health, social conditions and huge educational expense have tied up their hands to send their children to schools. Capital market imperfections and parental investments are thus limited by liquidity constraints. However exposure to trade can change the situation bec ause of the increase in the comparatively larger skill group. For a country that starts with a largely uneducated workforce, globalization raises the wage rate of the uneducated relative to the other educated workers. Recommendations The policies of the different countries that suffer due to such problems can be changed drastically. Some of the provisions in the policies can include the educational subsidies, school provisions, providing food to the poor children, exposure to world class education and many more as such. The following policies can also include public health expenditure which can help increase the incentives to the educational investments on a child. The government has to formulate the policy in such a way so that it can address all the concerns related to such problems and also address different other issues. The developed countries as well as UNICEF can play a major role too reduce the impact of child labor in developing and under developed countries. The most basic thing which can be done by them is to finance different educational initiatives or educational grants. They can also contribute to the health policies of the government which will surely make a huge difference. The countries with a la rgely uneducated labors educational and technical assistance of any kind can be quite beneficial. These countries must be compensated on a short term basis to save them from the effects of international competition. UNICEF has different programs under its belt that is aimed at providing quality education in different rural areas of these countries with the largest amount of child labor participation. The educational initiatives of these organizations can be of real help for the countries with a world class exposure to modern form of education. The scenario is changing slowly and in a short time from now the world can be free from the curse of child labor. Bibliography Almeida, B. d., Kassouf, . (2016). VThe effect of labor inspections on reducing child labor in BrazilV. UCW working paper. VThe effect of labor inspections on reducing child labor in BrazilV. UCW working paper. Cho, Fang, Tayur, Xu, . (2014). Combating child labor: Incentives and information transparency in global supply chains. Combating child labor: Incentives and information transparency in global supply chains. Cummings. (2016). Child Labor and Household Composition: Determinants of Child Labor in Mexico. 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