Factors affecting Child Labour in India

Abstract

Child labour in India is a critical socio-economic problem that needs special attention of policy makers. In order to make effective policies to reduce child labour it is important to understand the specific factors that affect it in different situations. The paper empirically examines these factors across 35 Indian states and union territories at three levels of aggregation: total population, rural/urban, and male/female. The results showed that education, fertility, and workforce participation are the major influencing factors in our models. Interestingly, impact of economic indicators of poverty and income differed among total, rural, urban, male, and female population. The explanatory powers of models showed large variations across different levels of aggregation and were stronger for total, rural and female population.