Poverty is the human condition. It is how we come into this world. Only a few people, throughout history, and a portion of the modern world, since the spread of capitalism, have managed to escape from misery. Child labor is only one aspect of poverty. Children depend in large measure on their own efforts, without their parents being able to offer much in the way of aid. This situation changes when parents can afford the luxury of supporting their children without the children themselves having to contribute anything to maintaining the family. Wealth alleviates child labor, as the fact it has disappeared in rich countries (that is, capitalist countries) demonstrates. Meanwhile, it continues in poor countries.

 

In one of his studies, Eric V. Edmonds, perhaps the greatest expert on this problem, showed countries that trade more, the ones most involved in global capitalism, are also the ones able to reduce child labor the most. Specifically, for every 1 percent increase in trade openness, child labor decreases 0.7 percent.

 

An obvious case is Vietnam, where he undertook a large study (3,000 families) between 1993 and 1998. In those 5 years, during which time Vietnam joined in global capitalism, average growth was 9 percent and child labor fell 30 percent. Once basic needs are covered, this increase in production explains 80 percent of the fall in child labor. Edmonds concluded that “Child labor does not appear to vary with per capita expenditures until households can meet their food needs, and it then declines dramatically.”

 

Despite capitalism being the one that frees children from having to work, anti-free market groups reach just the opposite conclusion. To do so, they have to link child labor to large, capitalist companies. But child labor has always existed, together with poverty, and generally it has been tied to the fields as a common feature of all humanity. This is what is happening today. The vast majority of children working are working for their parents in the fields. But the anti-globalization movement doesn’t care. It is only worried about children laboring for large companies, to use them as a weapon against those same companies. And it does this despite the salaries they pay being, on average, double what local companies offer.   

 

What happens when the anti-globalization movement has success? Radley Balko tells us: “In the early 1990s, the United States Congress considered the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have taken punitive action against companies benefiting from child labor. The Act never passed, but the public debate it triggered put enormous pressure on a number of multinational corporations with assets in the U.S. One German garment maker laid off 50,000 child workers in Bangladesh. The British charity organization Oxfam later conducted a study that found that thousands of those laid-off children later became prostitutes, turned to crime, or starved to death.” Hypocrisy has a price. But it is always the same people who have to pay it.