Study of socio demographic and health profile of child labourers.

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Child labour is a critical problem, which in turn leads to many other problems like illiteracy, poverty, malnutrition etc. So detailed study is carried out with objectives of 1)To study the socio- demographic and health characteristics of child labourers and their relationship. 2) To identify the causal factors of child labour. Methods: a Cross sectional study in 30 slum areas of Rajkot city is carried out from May 2005 to July 2005. 372 child labourers were taken by cluster methodology. Data were collected using a pretested semi structured questionnaire from each child labourer during house-to-house visit. Statistical analysis was done by Z test, Chi – square test etc. Results: 95.03% of the child labourers belonged to social class 3 and 4. 9.1% never attended the school. Mean family size was 5.67. 35.7% child labourers suffered from some kind of morbidity in the last 15 days and 23.7% had harmful addiction. Conclusion and Interpretation: Poverty and dropouts are the important causes of child labour. There was no medical care facility at workplace in most cases. Harmful addiction was significantly associated with male child labourers, illiteracy of fathers and higher age group.