Child Labor in India:From Welfarist to Economic Perspective

Child labor in India is a critical socioeconomic issue which generates interest among the international and national bodies to initiate appropriate policies to control it. The policy makers have mostly focused on the welfare aspects without looking into the important economic aspects. Both welfare and economic aspects are especially important in the context of a developing nation like India. In order to have effective policies to deal with the problem of child labor, one needs to understand the factors influencing it. This paper studies the macro level indicators of the major factors influencing child labor incidence for the following four categories: male children in rural areas, female children in rural areas, male children in urban areas, and female children in urban areas. The effect of these factors differs across the four categories in this cross-sectional study covering 28 states and 7 union territories of the Indian federation. The results show that besides welfare aspects like educational and developmental factors, economic aspects like work force participation rate, poverty factors, and family factors show significant effect on child labor.