Most people living in the western world agree that child labor is a violation of human rights and horrific form of exploitation. The seemingly natural corollary is that Western companies, therefore, should stop purchasing products produced by harmful child labor, and their refusal to do so is reprehensible. However, this perspective has several issues that are rarely thought about, yet essential to formulating a practical solution to the issue.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Western companies completely quit purchasing all goods whose production involved harmful child labor. Such a move, undertaken without other poverty-alleviating measures, would be unlikely to improve the living standards or economic opportunities for children suffering under child labor. Harmful child labor occurs primarily in one of two situations: the first is forced labor in which children are kept as laborers under duress and without themselves choosing 1 to work, and the second is voluntary child labor that occurs as a result of economic hardship pushing a family to make the choice rather than overt force from kidnappers or an armed group. I will analyze the potential impacts of Western disengagement from child labor in supply chains in both situations.
In the first situation of forced labor, Western companies ending trade with the culpable producers would not free the children from forced labor and could result in human traffickers merely selling captured children to employers unimpacted by the de facto western embargo, e.g. selling them to mines or factories primarily serving a domestic market, or sectors isolated from western markets, such as prostitution. This is not an improvement to the children’s quality of life and does not make significant progress towards ending child labor.
I agree that, even if child labor would still continue with a de facto Western embargo, such a move would decrease the moral repugnance of the status quo in which technology companies are linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the 21st century. Even if the problem isn’t solved by Western disengagement, there is still value to eliminating some of the market and making it a bit harder for child traffickers to find profit through their atrocities. However, a lasting, comprehensive solution to child labor will necessarily involve action taken by the governments of countries with a high prevalence of child labor, not Western companies taking actions that can only partly mitigate the issue.
A similar dilemma would occur in the second situation of voluntary child labor as a result of economic hardship rather than overt coercion. If Western tech companies stop sourcing minerals from mines employing child labor, poor children could just be displaced into other low-wage sectors supplying the domestic market instead (as before, the exact impact depends on the size of the domestic market as compared to export volume). If anything, the decreased demand for minerals might hurt the mining industry and harm the wage growth that is likely already negligible, further punishing the families who send their kids to work due to abject poverty. As repulsive as it sounds, demand from Western companies, while using an exploitative form of labor, might actually be helping raise household income for some of the poorest families in the world who would otherwise be struggling even more to afford food.
The natural objection to this argument is that, thinking beyond short-term income gains, K-12 education is more useful for increasing household income because it enables children to later find higher-paying jobs as adults rather than remaining miners their whole lives. In a world where Ethiopia and South Sudan had functioning K-12 schools, I would vastly prefer children attend those schools rather than work in coal mines that are damaging to their health and their future. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most countries with high prevalence of voluntary child labor: for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has a poorly-funded education system with huge disparities in access to education, making it impossible for many children to attend schools. The DRC’s government has historically been unable to pay teachers their salaries, and in many rural areas, parents have to cover part or all of teachers’ salaries as a part of school fees, making it impossible for poor families to pay for their kids’ enrollment. Large parts of the country do not even have schools, forcing children to travel impractically long distances to receive a sub-par education that likely won’t even provide access to better-paying jobs 2. However, it is impractical for kids from destitute families to sit at home, unable to attend school, while their families struggle to put food on the table. Western companies’ connection to child labor is, in this case, a vital means of poverty alleviation so long as education remains inaccessible and families are so poor that they can’t afford to leave any income source (even their own children) untapped 3.
It is this second situation, of voluntary child labor caused by family poverty, that makes me reluctant to support a complete abstention by Western companies from supply chains using child labor. I find the situation as horrifying as anyone else and would support Western withdrawal from child labor if there were a functioning education system to serve as an alternative to child labor; however, in the absence of such circumstances, it’s possible that Western withdrawal could cause more harm than good, as demonstrated above. The case of forced child labor is less complex, in that the workers are not paid and therefore there is no poverty alleviation taking place; but even then, Western disengagement does not solve the issue, and forced child labor, which takes place only in conflict zones under specific circumstances, is likely a less significant share of total child labor when compared to the voluntary case.
This post ends with an unsatisfying answer – I don’t know exactly where I stand on this issue. I feel repulsed by the idea of Western tech companies profiting off child labor in Africa, but at the same time, Western disengagement would not solve the issue of child labor and could actually worsen poverty in many parts of the world. As such, I can not confidently support complete elimination of child labor from Western companies’ supply chains. If such a move were accompanied by the establishment of strong education systems and broader poverty alleviation measures in countries with high child labor prevalence, I would see it as a necessary and beneficial move – but given the current state of governance in the DRC, South Sudan, etc, such wide-sweeping reforms are unlikely, and I am not sure Western disengagement alone will lead to a positive outcome. This post is not a rigorous economic analysis that provides a conclusive answer to the question, which is why I am ending with a strong note of uncertainty. However, I do hope that this has introduced new facets of the problem to some readers and helped deepen people’s understanding of child labor.
When I refer to children ‘choosing’ to work, I’m not implying children can provide informed consent to an employer-employee contract. I’m talking about choosing to take on a job, even if that consent is a result of family pressure to work due to economic hardship. The same nuance applies to the use of the word ‘voluntary’ and similar phrasing. Perhaps not the most precise use of language, but it is simpler than adding this in parentheses a dozen times. I added this endnote out of an abundance of caution, wary that some readers would not apply the principle of charity when reading this.↩︎
See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e30771 “Does the education system matter? Exploring in-depth joint school attendance, hazardous and non-hazardous activities in artisanal and small-scale mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” published in Heliyon↩︎
Empirical evidence has consistently supported the conclusion that family poverty is the primary driver of harmful child labor. See “Revisiting the Link between Poverty and Child Labor : The Ghanaian Experience” and “Child Labor, Poverty and School Attendance: Evidences from the Philippines by Region”↩︎