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such as tourism which is a potentially high foreign exchange earning sector, and can generate considerable employment opportunities in remote areas.
2.8.2 Child Labour in Pakistan
Child labour is a big problem all around the world, which accounted for approximately 250 million child workers exist in the age group of 5-14 all over the world.
Generally speaking, child labour is exploited in some way physically, mentally or morally by blocking the access of education and normal healthy growth.
The main cause of child labour in Pakistan is poverty. It is about 30 of the population live below the poverty line; which is resulted in the coercion of the children to
enter the labour market in order to earn a livelihood for their own survival and to support the incomes of their families. These children being deprived of educational opportunities, live in
a stressful situation through out their life and give birth to a generation which later might experience the same situation with them when they grow up. Hence, the chains of poverty
and darkness are never ended. According to the National Survey of Child Labour conducted in 1996 by the Federal
Bureau of Statistics with the collaboration of ILO in Kiani 2010:2, the total number of children in Pakistan aged 5-14 years is 40 million. The total number of children found were
3.3 million or 8.3 of the total children in the country. About 73 of the child workers were found to be boys, while 27 were girls. Majority of the child workers 58.6 or 1.94
million were found in Punjab. It was also found that children involved in work were about 8 times in the rural areas witch may be greater than in urban areas. About one third of the
working children were literate, boys being more educated than girls and urban children were educated more than the rural children. Employment status by broad categories indicated that
about 70 of the child labour was unpaid.
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Significant urban rural differentials were observed under the broad category of employment status. In rural areas, three fourth of the child labour were working as unpaid
family members, while in the urban areas it was one third. About 46 of the child labour worked more than 35 hours per week, worked 56 hours or more.
There are different reasons of child labour. Poverty is one of the basic reason. The incidence of poverty in Pakistan is not decreasing over time due to political uncertainty, poor
law and order condition, low economic growth, high income inequality, corruption, unemployment paucity of resources and trade deficits. Further, Pakistan’s high population
growth rate of 2.22 posses multiple challenges, problems and threatens to constrain the limit resources and economic development of the country Kiani, 2010:8. As a result of high
rate of population growth, a large work force seeking employment is regularly being inducted into labour market of the country. It is very difficult for parents from poor families to provide
the primary education of their children. A large number of children are seen working in the streets: The next category of child
labour is seen in auto repair workshops. The third major employment for boys is road side hotels. A large number of children work in agriculture sector. One of the most difficult child
labours is working in brick kilns. The children are generally paid with low wages or sometimes only paid with food.
Schooling problems further add to the child labour. Many times, children aged 10- 14 years seek employment because there is no access to schools for them. In rural areas of
Pakistan, most of the schools are either without teachers or inadequate staff. As a result, parents may not send their children to schools when they could be helpful in supporting the
family income by working. Sometimes, parents send their children to vocational school so they could have specialization in mechanic, electric, tailoring and .
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In Pakistan, there has been a decrease in the proportion of child labour over the 1990s and therefore, it is important to investigate how this deflation has been affected by the
Employment of Children Act 1991 ECA Kiani 2010:4. It aims to do so by exploiting a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the extent to which the ECA 1991 affected the
decrease in child labour in Pakistan. Since the ECA specifies a minimum age of 14 years for work. It is expected that it would affect employment rates primarily of children less than 14
years old. This paper used regression discontinuity data design, which is used the difference- in-difference estimator to isolate the effect of legislation from the effects of other factors
influencing the child labour market.
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Design
