ABSTRACT
Although the incidence of child labour worldwide has decreased over the last two decades or so, both in absolute and percentage terms, the use of children at work is still one of the most disconcerting problems in the transitional societies of the developing economies. Working children in these countries in general are subjected to a process of implacable exploitation characterized by low wages, long hours of work, unclean, unhygienic and unsafe working and living conditions and, more importantly, deprivation of education, all of which hamper their proper physical and mental development. Apart from its short-term ill effects on health and welfare, child labour impedes children’s human capital accumulation and prevents them from becoming natural productive adults in the future. Low human capital formation adversely affects future economic development, which, in turn, reinforces the child labour problem itself. Trapped in a vicious circle of underdevelopment, child labour reproduces generations of less educated and less skilled workers.
