Relationship between education and child labor in children and adolescents of Uruguay

Today arround the world, it is estimated that 152 million children and adolescents need to work to survive. The international regulation establishes that this kind of work can be categorized in Child Labor (CL) or Non-Child Labor (NCL), depending on the age and the labor conditions. It is considered CL if the child has not reached the age of 15 years or when has between 15 and 17 years and the working time exceeds 37 hours per week and/or the tasks to be performed are considered risky. CL will be the analized category in this research. Taking into account that education is one of the most effective tools to improve the conditions of children and adolescents in a CL situation, the objective of this research is to provide empirical results on the relationship between education and CL in Uruguay. The analyzed data came from the Encuesta Nacional de Trabajo Infantil (ENTI), conducted in Uruguay between September 2009 and May 2010, the analysis were made considering only the working group CL (n = 793). This survey is structured in 5 blocks: Education, Domestic tasks, Economic activity, occupational health and Begging situation. The main results of this research are: Education correlates positively with Domestic tasks and negatively with Economic activity, Occupational health and Begging situation. In addition, the highest scores in Education belong to women and the lowest to men. In summary, it is concluded that women in CL situation have better working conditions than men. From these results it is clear that, although it is not the only factor determinating the quality of the work of children and adolescents in anCL situation, education is an essential tool to improve the quality of work carried out by children and adolescents