Child Labor
Globally, around 200 million children, or minors seventeen years old or younger, are involved in child labor in various industries (including food service, manufacturing, and construction), and about 20 million children are involved in forced labor. In the United States, consistently federal agencies conservatively estimate about 200,000 children are injured at work each year. Among many potential activities available to older children outside of school, paid and unpaid work are two common legal options. Child labor helps produce consumer products and food used by citizens in their communities as local subsistence, or services, and helps supply global markets. Thus, in daily work of minors—a known susceptible, vulnerable population group—exposures occur to acute and chronic safety and health risks due to multiple agents indoors, outdoors, and in semi-enclosed areas. Working children may miss formal education, play, and other opportunities for healthy social and personal physical, mental, and emotional development. This article summarizes specific physical safety and health aspects of child labor based on peer-reviewed literature worldwide through January 2020. Sections of this article—after highlighting references providing a brief historical overview—purposely summarize research on adverse outcomes (injury and illness) of child labor by regions of the world and for specific countries where relatively more peer-reviewed research has been published to date. This article does not cover details of other important economic, social, and psychological aspects of child labor, topics for which other review articles and book chapters exist. This article can help public health researchers and practitioners understand more about child labor and associated injury and illness.