It is commonly believed that trade liberalization in developing countries fosters child labor. Families would send their children to work in new export-driven sectors, particularly textile and apparel, while greedy multinational corporations would take advantage of these families’ desperate condition to shamelessly exploit children.
Well, think again. In an article just posted on VoxEu.org, Dartmouth economists Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik argue that trade liberalization could actually have a positive effect on child labor:
“Our recent research shows that children are less likely to work in countries with more international trade. The negative association between trade and child labour holds even when considering only poor countries’ trade with high-income countries. It also holds up for trade in unskilled-labour intensive products. Quite simply, child labour is less prevalent in countries that trade more because countries that trade more are richer, and children work less in richer countries”
According to Edmonds and Pavcnik, instead of assuming that international trade can cause children to work we should begin by asking why do children work. The main reason children work in some developing countries is poverty. Trade liberalization could thus foster child labor if it makes families poorer. Edmonds and Pavcnik claim that it doesn’t, but that’s a heated debate in the development policy community. Most studies show that globalization and trade feed inequality but not necessarily poverty. World Bank studies show that globalization has reduced poverty but some scholars, like Robert Wade, have questioned the validity of World Bank indicators.
But whatever the actual causal relation between globalization and poverty, Edmonds and Pavcnik have a point when they write that:
“Before one boycotts a product with child labour content or supports punitive trade sanctions, one should ask whether these measures will make the child better off. Will boycotts or sanctions eliminate the reasons why children work? Thus far, most of the existing evidence suggests that eliminating sources of income will not make poor families better off. It will not change the circumstances that cause children to work.”
