The Role of Stomach Infrastructures on Children’s Work and Child Labour in Africa: Systematic Review

Abstract

Child labour remains a prevalent global concern, and progress toward eradicating harmful children’s work appears to have stalled in the African continent and henceforth, integrated social policy intervention is still required to address the problem. Among several forms of social policy interventions, stomach infrastructure (i.e., in-kind and/or cash transfers) have been a key policy approach to support vulnerable families to lighten households’ resources burden, which forces them to consider child labour as a coping strategy. There is growing evidence on the impacts of these programs in child labour. However, this evidence is often mixed regarding children’s work outcomes, and the existing studies hardly describe such heterogeneous outcomes from the child-sensitive approach. To this end, a systematic literature search was conducted for studies in African countries. From 743 references retrieved in this study, 27 studies were included for the review, and a narrative approach has been employed to analyse extracted evidence. Results from the current study also demonstrate a mixed effect of in-kind and cash transfers for poor households on child labour decisions. Hence, the finding from the current review also demonstrates a reduced participation of children in paid and unpaid work outside the household due to in-kind and cash transfers to poor households, but children’s time spent in economic and non-economic household labour and farm and non-farm labour, which are detrimental to child health and schooling, has been reported increasing due to the program interventions. The question remains how these programs can effectively consider child-specific and household-related key characteristics. To this end, a child-sensitive social protection perspective has been applied in this study to explain these mixed outcomes to inform policy design.

Child labor and associated risk factors in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review

“…However, none of the reviewed studies assessed the effectiveness of these intervention measures during the pandemic at its peak. In addition, various child-specific and household-related characteristics such as poverty, neglect, vulnerability of children to various grades of violence, parental education status, gender, and household size among other factors can determine the effectiveness of social protection programs on the outcomes of child labor ( 89 ).…”

O trabalho precoce de crianças e adolescentes em situação de vulnerabilidade

“…Segundo o Fundo das Nações Unidas para a Infância (UNICEF), o número de crianças em situação de trabalho precoce aumentou para 160 milhões em todo o mundo (8) , o que é confirmado em estudos recentes que apontam para a presença do trabalho infantil em países da América do Norte, da Ásia e da África (10)(11)(12)(13) .…”

Impaired health in working children: a critical ethnography

“…Child labor, which can be seen in various forms such as agriculture, construction work, janitor and cleaning, carpet weaving, street working, begging, and working in factories, canteens and repair shops, is a global phenomenon that is mainly seen in low-income countries [ 3 ]. Majority of working children are from Africa and Asia [ 4 ]. According to the latest global estimates, 160 million children (63 million girls and 97 million boys) were in child labor at the beginning of 2020, which is almost 1 in 10 children worldwide [ 4 ].…”

“…Majority of working children are from Africa and Asia [ 4 ]. According to the latest global estimates, 160 million children (63 million girls and 97 million boys) were in child labor at the beginning of 2020, which is almost 1 in 10 children worldwide [ 4 ]. Some reports indicate that 61% of working children live in the Asian and Pacific regions [ 1 ].…”