An empirical approach about some important features of child labor in Turkey

The study examines effects of some factors on the child labor force in Turkey such as the level of education of household heads determining the child labor, the features of geographical region where the household live and sex of working children. It is a motivation tool of opting for this subject in a developing country having a young population that there are few empirical studies concerning the fact of child labor. The empirical results obtained from non-conditional probability and probit analyses show that the employment rates of boys are higher than that of girls in both urban and rural regions. The education level of decision-makers of household in rural areas is lower than that of in urban regions and accordingly child labor employment rates in rural regions is higher than the same rates in urban regions. These facts mean that the lower the level of education of household heads is, the higher the child labor becomes. That is, when the education level of decision-makers decreases in rural areas, the child labor becomes more common.