The NRVA 20078 did not collect population-wide information about occupations, but the occupational distribution can largely be deduced from the industry distribution. There can be little doubt that the large majority of employed persons is
employed as agricultural workers, either skilled or unskilled, at a distance followed by craft and trade workers, construction labourers and service workers.
4.3.3 Working hours
Noticeable differences exist between the number of hours worked across the urban, rural and Kuchi populations. The urban employed work on average significantly longer than the rural and Kuchi: 48 hours per week against 34 and 38
hours, respectively Figure 4.7.
6
For 28 percent of the urban workers an average working week of even 60 hours or more was reported, and only 9 percent work less than 20 hours. The variation across the residential populations is
largely caused by male workers, as averages for females vary only little. Figure 4.7 also shows that women are occupied in work for much less time than men, especially in the urban sector. This
further deteriorates women’s disadvantaged position on the labour market, given their already low employment ratio. There is also a differentiation in average working hours by age, revealing an inverse U-shaped pattern, with working
hours peaking in the age group 25-39. The age effect is more pronounced for men than for women, and more among rural workers than in the other working populations.
Figure 4.7 Average number of weekly working hours by the employed population, by residence, and by sex
4.4 Children and work
In view of participation in education see Section 7.3 and the need for additional income in many Afghan households, a significant number of children is involved in work or employment. The risk of children engaged in employment is that
the work activities in various ways may jeopardize their health or development. However, this is not necessarily the case for all child employment. The concept of child labour was introduced to identify the type of child employment that
exposes children to harmful conditions. Its definition is a long-debated issue on many international fora, and is applied differently across countries. Nevertheless, international recommendations were approved at the 2008 18th International
Conference of Labour Statisticians, in consultation with – among others – ILO and UNICEF ILO 2008b.
The adopted definition specifies child labour along four dimensions see also Box ‘Child labour’ below:
•
Covering economic production activities, falling in the System of National Accounts SNA production boundary.
•
The nature of the work children are involved in, in the sense of a light work, b other, not hazardous work, c hazardous work, and d worst forms of child labour.
7
Labour force characteristics
33
_________________________________________________________ 6
In the period August-October, covering the harvest season, working hours of the rural and Kuchi working population are significantly higher than the annual average.
7
For definitions, see the glossary at the end of this report.
Labour force characteristics
34
•
Age, according to recommended age brackets of 5-11, 12-14 and 15-17 years of age.
•
Number of hours worked. In Afghanistan, no clear determination of child labour exists, other than that the formal age at entry in the labour market is
16 years, and that for specific types of light work a minimum age of 14 is allowed. In view of the international guidelines for child labour, the present analysis attempts to produce statistics accordingly. However, the NRVA data do not
sufficiently specify the nature of the work done by children, so that the results are at best a conservative approximation. Consequently, a more general description of children engaged in productive work – working or employed children – is
also provided.
The total number of working children in the age range 6-17 is around 1.9 million, which corresponds to 21 percent of all children in that age bracket see Table 4.4. The incidence rises from 12 percent in the youngest age group of 6-11 year
olds, to 27 percent in the middle group aged 12-14, and to 42 percent in the oldest age group of 15-17 year olds. It is consistently higher among Kuchis than among rural and especially urban populations. The working incidence of girls is
consistently lower than that of boys, typically at a level of around 60 percent of that of boys, except for urban areas where it is even lower and the gap is increasing with age.
Looking at the narrower ILO definition of child labour, similar patterns at lower levels are observed for the incidence by sex
and residence, but here the highest incidence by age is found in the middle group. Overall, at least 13 percent of children
aged 6-17 are involved in child labour. This corresponds to around 1.2 million children, of whom close to 800 thousand
are boys and 400 thousand are girls, and some 550 thousand are children under age 12. As the NRVA data cannot provide
full specifications of the nature of work done by children, the true figure for child labour is between the identified 1.2 million
and the 1.9 million of all working children.
Most child labour is done within the dwelling 41 percent, on the land or in gardens 37 percent. However, the distribution sharply differs by sex in accordance with practices of fe-
male mobility. Around 73 percent of girls work inside the dwelling against 25 percent of boys; the corresponding figures for work on the land is 18 and 47 percent. Urban child labour deviates from the overall pattern, as here the employment
in shops, restaurants, markets, etc. is the major place of work 37 percent, next to the dwelling 35 percent and selling on the street 10 percent. Even more than among the rural and Kuchi populations, the work of urban girls is confined
within the house 90 percent.
Engagement in work is clearly a risk for the educational development of children. For each of the primary, secondary and high school age groups, the share of working children not attending school is twice as high as the corresponding share
of children not working respectively 8 versus 4, 17 versus 8, and 32 versus 14 percent. Children involved in work ac- cording to the narrower definition of child labour have even higher non-attendance rates. The adverse effect of working
seems to be stronger for boys than for girls.
Child labour
In accordance with the recommendations of the 18th ICLS, child labour includes the following categories of children:
1. Children age 5–11 years, engaged in any economic activity;
2. Children age 12–14 years, engaged in any economic activity for at least 14 hours a week, or any hazardous
work or worst forms of child labour; 3. Children age 15–17 years, engaged in non-hazardous
economic activities for at least 43 hours per week, and those engaged in any hazardous work or worst forms of
child labour.
