Methodology

Foundational research: secondary data analysis

The Child Labor Economics module is built on a secondary-data comparative study across six countries — India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Brazil, Ethiopia, and Pakistan — chosen because each represents a distinct region and set of socio-cultural drivers of child labor. Data was drawn from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), UNICEF, the World Bank, national government records, and peer-reviewed case studies.

For each country, the research compiled child labor rates, affected sectors, regional variation, and the effectiveness of policy interventions such as school meal programs and conditional cash transfers — then cross-referenced those against economic indicators (family income levels, GDP contribution, school enrollment) to test the relationship between child labor and economic development.

Known limitations

Because this research relies solely on secondary data — no direct contact with child laborers or their families was conducted, to preserve ethical safety — it inherits the limitations of its sources: reporting can be outdated, incomplete, or biased, and informal-sector work is systematically under-reported in every country studied. The comparative, cross-country method is a deliberate response to this: patterns that hold across all six very different countries are more trustworthy than any single country’s numbers in isolation.

How this platform extends the research

Every number displayed on this site is either drawn directly from the published paper (and cited as such) or from the same class of public institutional sources — ILO, UNICEF, World Bank — cited at the point of use. As new modules are added, each will publish its own data sources and scoring methodology openly, rather than as a black box.