ABSTRACT

According to the International Labor Organization’s statistics in 2013, there are 168 million children worldwide in the labor market. This number is much higher when we include children who work in unpaid jobs such as house chores and unpaid work in family businesses. The extent of problem is not different for the Turkey and it even got worse after the arrival of around 4 million Syrian refugees. This paper analyzes the Child Labor Survey in 2012 and finds that girls have higher probability of being child workers both in rural and urban areas. Moreover, the negative association between child labor and education is stronger for children aged between 15 to 17. Household size and parental education levels are found to be important determinants of child labor as it is already suggested by the literature in different contexts. In terms of sectoral distribution, we find a clear pattern with respect to gender. Girls have higher probability to work in the agricultural sector while boys have higher likelihood of working in manufacturing sector, irrespective of their ages. Furthermore, parental educational level which is used as a proxy for the potential income of the household head is found to be significantly associated with the work conditions of boys although it is not found to be statistically significant factor for girls’ work conditions