Child labor

Child labor has declined in the long run

How common is it today for children to work?

Many children across the world are defined as economically active. In the visualisation below we show the share of children aged 7-14 who are involved in economic activity for at least one hour per week. In high prevalence countries – such as in Cameroon – 6 out of every 10 children ages 7-14 work at least one hour per week.

In general, work among children tends to be more common in the poorest countries.

Where do children work?

Seven in ten children in child labour are working in agriculture. This work relates mainly to subsistence and commercial farming and herding livestock, and is often hazardous.

Contrary to popular perception, most working children in the world (more than two-thirds) are unpaid family workers, rather than paid workers in manufacturing establishments or other forms of wage employment.

How much do working children work?

Working hours of children vary widely between countries. For working children, this can range from 2-3 hours to more than 30 hours per week, as in Bangladesh.

The incidence of child labor in a country is a weak predictor of the average number of hours worked by children in the same country. For example, Bangladesh and Ukraine both have a similar proportion of children who work; but in the former case, children tend to work ten times the number of hours.

Violent discipline

What counts as violent discipline?

The two main forms of violent discipline are corporal punishment and psychological violence. According to UNICEF, physical discipline, also known as ‘corporal punishment’ refers to any punishment in which physical force is used to cause any degree of pain or discomfort. It includes, for example, pinching, spanking, hitting children with a hand, or forcing them to ingest something. Violent psychological discipline involves “the use of verbal aggression, threats, intimidation, denigration, ridicule, guilt, humiliation, withdrawal of love or emotional manipulation to control children”. Violent discipline is a violation of a child’s right to protection from all forms of violence while in the care of their parents or other caregivers, as set forth in the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.

How common is violent discipline at home?

The two main forms of violent discipline are corporal punishment and psychological violence. Around the world, children are subject to one or both of these. The available data suggests that in some countries, violent discipline is the norm. The chart below shows the percentage of children aged 2-14 years old who, according to self-reports by caregivers or other household members, experienced any violent discipline at home in the past month, whether in the form of psychological aggression and/or physical punishment.

Violent discipline is slightly less common in richer countries; but the available data shows that in almost all countries it is only a minority of children who do not experience any violent discipline.

The evidence shows that violent disciplinary methods often go together, which means in the majority of countries most children experience both corporal punishment and psychological violence. In the chart below we see the percentage of children aged 2-14 years old who experience only psychological violence; only physical violence; and those who experience both.

How are parents’ perceptions about violent discipline changing over time?

Long-run data on violent discipline against children is not available for most countries. In the United States, however, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering data on parents’ perceptions regarding violent discipline for over three decades. The GSS data, plotted in the chart below, shows that today about two-thirds of American parents agree with the statement “Sometimes a child just needs a good, hard spanking.” As the chart below shows, high as this number is, there has been an important reduction over the period. And this is true both for parents who ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ with spanking.

Is violent discipline used similarly often against boys and girls?

As the scatter plot below shows, violent discipline is slightly more commonly used against boys than girls. But the differences are not large and the cross-country differences in total violent punishment are much larger than the within-country gender differences. In countries where violent discipline is common, it typically affects most boys and girls.

How common is violent discipline in schools?

Data on violent discipline in schools is sparse. But the available estimates suggest this is an important problem in many countries. In India, for example, almost 4 out of 5 children age 8 report physical punishment by teachers.

Bullying and violence at school

Bullying

In its broadest sense, bullying refers to the use of aggression to assert power over someone. More specifically, it has been defined by researchers as “actions, either physical or verbal, that have a hostile intent, are repeated over time, cause distress for the victim and involve a power imbalance between the perpetrator and victim.”3

Bullying is an important form of violence at schools in many countries, and is prevalent across all regions. The map shown below shows the percentage of adolescents aged between 13-15 years old who reported being bullied at least once in recent months. Some countries – being highest, on average, across African countries – reported a prevalence greater than 50 percent; countries across the Americas and Europe tended to report slightly lower rates between 20-40 percent.

Fights

Physical fighting in schools is a common form of violence. Available evidence shows that physical fighting tends to go together with worse educational outcomes. The chart below shows the percentage of 13 to 15-year-olds who reported being involved in physical fighting in the prior year.

In most countries the prevalence of physical fighting tends to be higher among males than females, however it remains common in most countries across both genders.

In the US, violent crimes in schools are common but less so than in the past

Sexual violence against children

What are the main forms of sexual violence against children?

Sexual violence against children encompasses situations “in which a child is forced to perform a sexual act by a caregiver or neighbour, pressed to have unwanted sexual intercourse by a dating partner, exposed to sexual comments or advances by a peer or an adult, impelled to engage in sex in exchange for cash, gifts or favours, coerced to expose her or his sexual body parts, including in person or online, subjected to viewing sexual activities or sexual body parts without his or her consent, or raped by a group of persons as part of a ritual, a form of punishment or the cruelty of war.”5

The following are some of the most common forms of sexual abuse:

• Forced sex: Sexual intercourse or any other sexual acts that were forced, physically or in any other way. Sexual abuse: Sexual touching, unwanted attempted sex, pressured sex and physically forced sex.

• Sexual touching: Unwanted touching of the victim in a sexual way, such as kissing, grabbing, pinching or fondling.

• Pressured sex: Situations in which the victim was pressured in some way (e.g., threatening, harassing, luring or tricking) to have sexual intercourse against her or his will and sexual intercourse was completed.

• Physically forced sex: Situations in which the victim was physically forced to have sexual intercourse against his or her will.

• Unwanted attempted sex: Situations in which a perpetrator tried to make the victim have sexual intercourse when she or he did not want to but was unsuccessful in completing sexual intercourse.

Self-reported sexual abuse

Data on sexual violence against children is extremely difficult to capture since many victims are not able or willing to report their situation. However, available estimates of self-reported sexual victimization show that this is an extremely common tragedy.

The following visualization provides a comparison of different forms of sexual violence against women (do bear in mind that the figures are not directly comparable to those in the chart above, since the age brackets do not coincide).

Contrary to common perception, boys also report experiences of sexual violence, but to a lesser extent than girls. However, it is important to bear in mind that it is possible that boys are even less likely than girls to report incidents of sexual abuse.7

Child marriage and female genital mutilation

Child marriage

Children who are married or in an informal union with an older adult, tend to be particularly vulnerable to violence, especially sexual and domestic violence.8 Marriage and informal unions are very common in many parts of the world.

And, in fact, child marriage is legal in several countries. This includes also rich countries such as Canada, where the minimum age of marriage is 16.

Importantly, however, according to the World Bank’s 2017 Economic Impacts of Child Marriage study, in many countries where child marriage is common, there have been reductions in child marriage rates over the last few years.

Female genital mutilation

As noted by the WHO, female genital mutilation has no health benefits for girls and women. But it often does cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths (more details from the WHO Factsheet).

Female genital mutilation remains a common form of violence against women in many parts of the world. And, as it is nearly always carried out on minors, it constitutes a violation of the rights of children.

The practice is most common in the western, eastern, and north-eastern regions of Africa, in some countries the Middle East and Asia, as well as among migrants from these areas.

The below chart shows the percentage of women aged 15-49 years old who have gone through partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons. Shown are all countries with available data.

Homicides

According to UNICEF every 7 minutes somewhere in the world, an adolescent is killed by an act of violence. The following map shows homicide rates for children 0-19 years old, country by country.

As can be seen, there are huge regional differences. In 2015, the homicide rate in Latin America and the Caribbean was almost five times higher than the global average.

REFERENCES

The data was created and published by Our world in data