Labour and Economic Development: Emerging Issues in Developing Asia

Child labour is a serious and contentious issue throughout the developing world as it is demeaning and damaging to a child's health and intellectual development. However, what counts as child labour and who counts as a worker is still a controversial issue and many jobs fall outside the law. Child labour continues to be a problem whose form and very meaning shifts with social, geographical, economic and cultural context. In some regions child labor has persisted or reconstituted from the customary into the exploitative. Low wages, irregular hours of employment, exploitative slavery, atrocious working conditions, lack of contracting power all characterize child labour in many countries. Generalization is elusive because there are significant variations among the different kinds of work done, which can range from family help for parents to industrial work.