Child labor is the employment of children under a certain age determined by the government. Child labor exists in India, China, the US, Africa, Asia, Latin America and other places. It is estimated that 250 million children are in child labor around the world. 96% of child workers live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Most of these children are between the ages of 11 and 14 but there are 60 million that are 5 to 11 years of age. (American Journal of Public Health pg. 271)
Some employers that are hiring kids don’t know the child labor laws or job safety of their employees. That is why every year hundreds of thousands of children are injured where they work and approximately 70 die from these injuries. The Labor Department says that children must be at least 16 to work in a nonharmful job and at least 18 to work in a hazardous job. Children who are 14 and 15 can work under certain conditions.
The conditions that children work in are sometimes terrible: they’re overcrowded, unsanitized, hot, dusty, and loud. These children have to go to work in these conditions everyday. The short-term effect may sound good (an increase in family income) but the long-term effects are terrible. Since the children don’t go to school most of time, they grow up working in low-paying jobs because they’re illiterate. They can’t provide enough for their family so they have to send their children into child labor too. With this happening, child labor is pretty much being passed from generation to generation which is going in a complete circle and not improving anything. We need to help these people go to school and get a good education so their children don’t have to go through the same things they did. Their children can live life like a kid and not an adult.
Most times children have to do a lot of work for little or no amount of pay. For example, a four-year-old named Kajal has to roll up 22,000 incense sticks to get her pay of 100 taka which, in American money is about $1.50. It takes her about a week to complete the task, which means that she earns about $1.50 a week. A four-year-old should not have to roll up 22,000 incense sticks to get her pay; she should be in school getting the proper education. This is why child labor should be stopped.
Even though child labor can never be ended completely, because people will always disobey the law, we need to take the small steps toward making it a lot better. We can’t, however, just stop child labor without doing anything else to help the children because in some families, the child is the only source of income. If we take that away, that might force the children to go into some job that was worse their child labor job. Also, some countries are so poor that stopping child labor altogether might destroy the country’s economy. What we can do is boycott things made using child labor.

Sources
Roggero, Paola. "The Health Impact of Child Labor in Developing Countries: Evidence From Cross-Country Data." American Journal of Public Health 97 (2007): 271-275. WilsonSelectPlus.

Worthington, Barbara. "Not a Minor Labor Law Violation: Child Labor Laws a Problem Point for Employer, Says Study." Risk & Insurance May 2007: 13. Info Trac.