International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2018

The working hours of unpaid child workers in the handloom industry in India(Abstract)

Jadab Kumar Pal, Sonali Chakraborty, Hare Ram Tewari, Vinod Chandra

This paper investigates the effects of socioeconomic factors on the allocation of working time of unpaid child workers in the handloom industry. Based on regression and other statistical analysis of primary data collected from a field survey of 327 households engaged in the family-based handloom industry of Ramna Etbar Nagar of Domkal Block, a village of Murshidabad district within the state of West Bengal, India, the results show that allocation of working hours depends on many of the socioeconomic factors of the household. The Lorenz curve shows that there is an unequal distribution in allocation of working hours among the working children, and boys work more compared to girls for a higher schedule of work. It has also been found that the larger the size of the households, the greater the number of looms, and the greater the allocation of working hours of children.