Child labour is also bad for linguistic development
Child labour can stand in the way of linguistic development and mental health of Indian youth, according to the research thesis ‘The Class Divide in Urban Indian Youths’ Lives; Their Time-Use and Adaptive Functioning’ of Radhika Bapat. Promotion 13th of December.
"We looked at the linguistic development and mental health of children from different social classes in the context of child labour, sleep and academic activities. We saw that children with lower socioeconomic status devote more time to work and sleep and less time to academic tasks than their peers with a higher status," said Radhika Bapat.
"What we found is that child labor provides a strong explanation for both poorer language development and mental health in lower SES-children. We discovered that the relationship between the linguistic results and academic time is stronger in children with lower socioeconomic status, suggesting that especially these children would benefit if they could invest more time in school and less in other work."
This research is the only time-use study conducted in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is also the only Indian study that uses the time spending methodology with youth represented from a very diverse range of socio-economic classes, including minimally literate school-going youth. Until now we knew little about this, because this group is difficult to reach.