Final Brown Bag Talk of Spring - Professor Peter Dorman on Child Labor

Join us at 12 noon on Wednesday, March 23rd in WSC 101 for the final IPE Brown Bag talk of the year.

The ILO’s International Program on Child Labor has sponsored a study that looks at the consequences of conflict for the worst forms of child labor in five regions: Angola, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Unfortunately, it is difficult to establish a baseline—the factors that influence these types of child labor in more peaceful contexts—because there has been insufficient research on them. Nevertheless it is possible to tentatively identify a set of potential pathways that lead children into dangerous situations in the wake of conflict, and markers that can guide individuals and groups devoted to relief efforts. Overall, children are at great risk as a result of conflict, and not always in the same ways or for the same reasons as adults.

Peter Dorman is an economist who teaches at Evergreen State College in Olympia. His main areas of research are international economics, the economics of climate change, occupational health and child labor. His first assignment on child labor was serving as a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that produced the report “Protecting Youth at Work” in 1998. Since then he has headed several research projects for the International Labor Organization’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor, including a cost-benefit study of the global elimination of child labor and an investigation into the economic exploitation of children in four countries. He is currently involved in two projects that focus on the health hazards of child labor and interventions to reduce them.