This is a unique account of working-class childhood during the British industrial revolution, first published in 2010. Using more than 600 autobiographies written by working men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jane Humphries illuminates working-class childhood in contexts untouched by conventional sources and facilitates estimates of age at starting work, social mobility, the extent of apprenticeship and the duration of schooling. The classic era of industrialisation, 1790–1850, apparently saw an upsurge in child labour. While the memoirs implicate mechanisation and the division of labour in this increase, they also show that fatherlessness and large subsets, common in these turbulent, high-mortality and high-fertility times, often cast children as partners and supports for mothers struggling to hold families together. The book offers unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Its images of suffering, stoicism and occasional childish pleasures put the humanity back into economic history and the trauma back into the industrial revolution.

The NRC has convened the Committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards to provide expert, science-based advice on monitoring compliance with international labor standards. The committee held a workshop in July 2002 to assess the quality of information and measures of progress towards compliance with international labor standards. This document summarizes the workshop. Reflecting the workshop agenda, this report focuses primarily on the availability and quality of information to measure compliance with four core international labor standards that were identified in 1998 by the ILO. The goal of this workshop summary is to communicate the key ideas and themes that emerged from the workshop presentations and discussions.

168 million boys and girls work as child labourers in farms, fields, factories, homes, streets and battlefields around the world. A staggering 85 million are engaged in illegal, hazardous work which is harmful to physical, mental, spiritual, moral and educational development. What is the extent of child slavery around the world, and what are the industries which exploit children? This book tackles the myths and misunderstandings surrounding child labour and explains the international labour standards and approaches aimed at eventually eliminating the exploitation of children. The book also measures global progress in reducing child exploitation, including the role of Australian companies and consumers in ensuring the goods they produce and purchase meet minimum age standards. Child labour is everyone's business.

A documentary account of child labor in America during the early 1900s and the role Lewis Hine played in the crusade against it.

What kinds of jobs did children do in the past, and how widespread was their employment? Why did so many poor families put their children to work? How did the state respond to child labour? What problems arise in the interpretation of evidence of child employment? Child Labour in Britain, 1750-1870 - Offers a broad empirical analysis of how the work of children was integrated with the major economic and occupational changes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain - Argues that working children occupied a unique position within the context of the family, the labour market and the state - Discusses the key issues involved in the study of children's employment In this clear and concise study, Peter Kirby convincingly argues that child labour provided an invaluable contribution to economic growth and the incomes of working-class households. Consequently, the picture that emerges is much more complex than that portrayed in many traditional approaches to the subject.

This book provides new evidence of the theoretical and empirical causes and consequences of child labor. In so doing, the chapters provide a unique set of policy prescriptions that are applicable to both the developing countries that make up the case studies of the volume, as well as other countries more broadly. The volume is constructed to inform policy with rigorous analysis. However, unlike most academic studies, the language and flavour of the volume is largely non-technical, while the policy recommendations are practical. The volume is made up of three sections. The first section builds on the existing literature and provides new theoretical insights into child labor. Section 2 provides empirical evidence from both quantitative and qualitative case studies on child labor from across Asia, Africa and Latin America. This section provides information from studies conducted in Brazil, Cameroon, the Dominican Republic, India and Vietnam. Section 3 provides policy recommendations.