Why Children Work If education makes children and the societies in which they live better off, while having children go to work instead causes them to be worse off, why do children work rather than go to school?
Chapter III tackled this question by identifying a myriad of factors that create barriers which keep children in work and out of school. In some cases, families are forced to sacrifice their children s futures in order to meet their current needs for survival. The barriers implied by this trade-off are related to a poverty of resources. In other cases, children work instead of going to school simply because school is not an option available to them. These children suffer from a poverty of opportunities. In still other cases, the very availability of work can create a barrier to the schooling of children. And sometimes, the plight of an individual child laborer can be traced to all of the above. 1. Barriers Related to a Poverty of Resources If a family does not have the resources to survive without the labor of its children, it suffers from a poverty of resources. This poverty is an obvious barrier to schooling for these children. It can arise in many forms. For example: • Pervasive pov
