Studying and Child Labor Cannot Co-Exist, Study States

A group of scientists have found through a study that child labor has a direct impact on a child's academic performance.

While child labor has been termed illegal in many countries, the fact remains that it still exists. Now, a study has found that making a child work directly impacts his or her academic performance. According to researchers, factors like working hours and working in the morning or late evenings negatively impacts a child's studying ability.

In 2010, The International Labor Organization reported that approximately 215 million children across the world were still victims of child labor. While this number has decreased in some places over the last couple of years owing to some jobs being too dangerous for children, the numbers of children that are still victims to child labor between 15 to 17 years of age have increased drastically.

While many studies conducted in the past have concluded that working and studying together are incompatible, this new study finds that three factors largely influence this incompatibility. First is the working hours, then it's the working conditions and lastly, working during the morning just before school hours.

According to the rules in Colombia, children are allowed to work after the age of 15, provided their parents or local guardian has permission from the Labor officer. Even then, children aged between 15 to 17 years can only work up to a maximum of 6 hours a day or 30 hours a week.

The study was conducted on 1,453 girls and 1,849 boys, the average age being 9 years.

"At first we only interviewed the families, who acted as the source of information on the family, labour and education situation of the children," as explained by Isidro Maya-Jariego from the University of Seville and coauthor of the study.

Through the study it was found that "the type of work and exposure to situations that imply a physical or psychological risk had a negative impact on the academic results of the children."