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They mention that this will limit the amount of child labour used in cotton farming. What worries me, is what those kids will then do instead. They're working b
by Scandiravian 3y ago
They mention that this will limit the amount of child labour used in cotton farming. What worries me, is what those kids will then do instead. They're working because their family needs the income, so these children will be pushed into more perilous work if their farming job disappears
There needs to be some kind of programme that compensates these families to ensure that this production method doesn't make the situation worse. Could be part of a scheme where the families are paid if their child attends school.
- david38 3y agoProstitution. I recall a campaign to shut down some Indian rug making factories because of child labor. A welfare group did a follow up to ensure the children were not working in some other factory. Almost half had become street prostitutes.
- Doxin 3y agoWhile (obviously) child prostitution is awful, we should be careful to not slide into "child labor is good, actually". I don't have any solutions here.
- dsr_ 3y agoYou have identified a key problem in modern capitalism. None of the answers that actually solve the problem in good ways can be found in "more capitalism". Kids will attend school if and only if their families send them. The expected economic value this week needs to be higher than the value of putting the kids to work. Saying that educated kids will have a higher economic value in the future is useless in the short term. Long term, the countries that haven't gone through the demographic transition need to be pulled through it.
- Scandiravian 3y agoCompletely agree with your comment. What makes me annoyed about statements like "this will reduce the amount of child labour used to produce X" is that they're almost never followed up with an explanation on how to deal with the fallout of the loss of income for the affected families. It's a marketing strategy to make consumers feel good about not supporting child labour, not about improving the lives of those children. I didn't include it in my comment, but my suggestion would be to put a tax on a product like this that is used to replace the lost income of these families. It would have to be global to reach a scale that would have the required impact, which means that it will, unfortunately, never happen.
- albertopv 3y agoI'm much more educated than my parents and I make much less than them. Higher education is appealing no more, on average.