Causes of child labour in rural Punjab Kaur Baljeet, Sharma Shalini, Kaur Gaganpreet* Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India *Corresponding Author's Email - gagansociology@pau.edu
Online published on 3 May, 2025. Abstract Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through work that deprives them of their childhood, education and basic rights. It is a global issue, often driven by poverty, lack of access to education, and economic inequality. The study was conducted using primary data collected from 120 respondents (60 farm and 60 off farm) to analyse factors responsible for the child labour. The findings showed that personal factors i.e. economic needs and drunken father were the dominating factors responsible for child labour. Irregular income of the family and family debt forced the children to earn at earlier age. Besides these, migration, which is more common among farm respondents and large family size were contributing factor for increasing child labour. Thus, the study suggested that government should provide avenues of vocational training to provide better employment opportunities to unemployed parents and encourage them to send their wards to school for education. Top Keywords Child labour, Economic, Personal, Social factors. Top |