Teresa Makar

June 9, 2012
Paper 3--Child Labor in Myanmar
In the article, Long hours, meager wages: Child labor continues in Myanmar, Roxana
Saberi describes how the market for child labor continues to thrive in Myanmar, despite the
presence of child labor laws for over half a century. Saberi writes that 12 year old Soe Min
Lwin, a boy who earns only $35 a month by working 15 hour days, is one of five children
working for a tea shop owner in the city of Yangon. According to Saberi, child labor is the
pilla[r] of Myanmars economy, with children holding a variety of jobs including
housecleaners, factory hands and shop assistants (Saberi, 2015). Maplecroft ranks Myanmar
as seventh worst in the world for child labor, and 2006 UNICEF statistics estimate that nearly
one third of children between the ages of 7 and 16 have jobs (Saberi, 2015). Soe Min Lwin said
that he worked to support his family, as his stepfather (who did not have a steady job) often
could not find work.
Myanmar has had child labor laws on the books for over 60 years. In 1951, it passed a
law barring children 13-15 from working over four hours a day and prohibiting children under 13
from working in shops and factories at all. These laws do not apply to Soe Min Lwin, as he is
under 13 and works in a tea shop. The 12 year old does not attend school every day, but is
allowed six hours a week to attend classes held by the Myanmar Mobile Education Project.
The Project provides free informal education to 400 children working in tea shops. Its
founder, Tim Aye-Hardy, is not optimistic about child labor in Myanmar. He argues that
economic growth starting in 2011 has allowed many shops and restaurants to open up, and these
shops and restaurants need a cheap and reliable labor force. This has facilitated the movement
of children from rural areas to the city, where the availability of work is higher. Aye-Hardy

believes that child labor will persist in Myanmar unless major social and political change occurs
(Saberi, 2015).
Why are there so many children in Myanmar who, like Soe Min Lwin, are unable to
attend school and instead must start working at a young age? We receive an important clue from
Soes comment that he must support his family due to his stepfathers inability to find steady
work. Myanmar has experienced rapid economic growth since 2011 and has succeeded in
attracting foreign multinationals such as Gap and Coca-Cola to build factories there (Saberi,
2015). Factory jobs at Gap and Coca-Cola are in high demand, because as formal sector jobs,
they provide a competitive wage, having safer working conditions than many domestic jobs, and
may provide health benefits or other benefits to workers. According to Nafziger, wage policies
of foreign corporations operating in [LDCs] is one of many forces pressuring the modern
sector wage up in LDCs (p. 309). The result is that the prevailing wage for unskilled labor in
the LDC modern sector is frequently in excess of the market-determined wage (p. 309).
The combination of above market-level wages, safer working conditions, and additional
benefits makes formal sector work very appealing. As a result, there is an excess supply of
formal sector labor in developing countries like Myanmar, leading to unemployment. This is
likely the reason that Soe Min Lwins stepfather was unable to find steady work. As a result, Soe
had to find a job in order to support his family. As a child, he is unlikely to find work in the
formal sector and must work instead in the informal sector, where wages are lower, there are few
worker protections, and where the work may be very labor-intensive (Nafziger, ch.9).
Myanmars rapid growth has also created more disposable wealth. This increases the
demand for services and allows for the establishment of new businesses. More jobs are created
in the formal sector as a result. According to the Harris-Todaro Model of migration, the creation

of new formal sector jobs makes migrating to the city more attractive to people living in the rural
sector, because it raises the expected urban wages. This facilitates the mass rural-to-urban
migration that Tim Aye-Hardy spoke of. The consequence of mass migration is that not
everyone will be able to secure one of the new formal sector jobs. Some will be forced to work
in the informal sector instead (Nafziger, ch.9). High expected urban wages may have contributed
to Soes motivation to work in the city, 55 miles away from the rural village that the rest of his
family lives in (Saberi, 2015).
In addition to having low wages and poor working conditions, child laborers like Soe
Min Lwin are likely to have lower educational attainment than their peers. Beegle, Dehejia, and
Gatti (2009) found that Vietnamese children who worked an average of 24 hours a weekwhich
is far less than Soe workswere 46% less likely to be enrolled in school and achieved 1.6 fewer
years of schooling than their peers. Working children were also found to have lower math and
reading scores than their peers and were more likely to repeat a grade. The effects of child labor
on educational attainment are clearly negative. This can have detrimental impacts on the whole
society, as lower educational achievement hinders economic growth by keeping human capital
levels low (Forston, 2011). Surprisingly, the effects of child labor may not be completely
negative on the individual. Child laborers like Soe are more likely to be employed in wage labor
later in life (Beegle et al., 2009). This may help prevent the formation of a poverty trap, as they
may be able to support their families as adults and afford to keep their children in school.
Although Myanmar has had child labor laws on the books for over 60 years, it is clear
that these laws have not been successful in preventing child labor from persisting, especially in
the informal sector. For Soe Min Lwin and his family, there may be few other ways to avoid
falling into dire poverty. Hopefully, with continued development, the steady formation of new

formal sector jobs will be able to meet the supply of labor migrating from the rural sector. With
time, and social and political momentum, hopefully families like Soes will not have to ask their
children to work, but will be able to encourage their children to pursue school instead.

Bibliography
Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo, "More than One Billion People are Hungry in the World"
Foreign Policy, May/June 2011.
Beegle K, Dehejia R, Gatti R. Why Should We Care About Child Labor? The Journal of
Human Resources. 2009.
Fortson, Jane. "Mortality Risk and Human Capital Investment" Review of Economics and
Statistics, Feb 2011.
Nafziger, Ch. 9, Employment, Migration, and Urbanization in Economic Development, 5th
edition.
Saberi, Roxana. Long hours, meager wages: Child labor continues in Myanmar. Al Jazeera
America. April 14, 2015.