Child Labour and the Global Financial Crisis : An Issues Paper

Recent years have seen a sustained progress in the fight against child labour. The current global economic and financial crisis can potentially reverse the positive trends observed in several countries and further aggravate the problem in regions such as Sub Saharan Africa where the phenomenon of child labour has been particularly resistant to policy and programme measures.In this working paper we try to identify the main channels through which the global economic and financial crisis is likely to affect child labour and schooling decisions of households. We will briefly discuss what we know and what we would need to know better in order to design adequate mitigation policies. As underlined above, the outcomes will largely depend on policy choices; therefore it is urgent to identify the main knowledge gaps and to establish a solid monitoring system