Average working hours of children, working only, male, ages 7-14 (hours per week) - Country Ranking - Africa

Definition: Average working hours of children working only refers to the average weekly working hours of those children who are involved in economic activity and not attending school.

Source: Understanding Children's Work project based on data from ILO, UNICEF and the World Bank.

See also: Thematic map, Time series comparison

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Development Relevance: In most countries more boys are involved in employment, or the gender difference is small. However, girls are often more present in hidden or underreported forms of employment such as domestic service, and in almost all societies girls bear greater responsibility for household chores in their own homes, work that lies outside the System of National Accounts production boundary and is thus not considered in estimates of children's employment.

Limitations and Exceptions: Although efforts are made to harmonize the definition of employment and the questions on employment in survey questionnaires, significant differences remain in the survey instruments that collect data on children in employment and in the sampling design underlying the surveys. Differences exist not only across different household surveys in the same country but also across the same type of survey carried out in different countries, so estimates of working children are not fully comparable across countries. For detailed source information, see footnotes at each data point.

Statistical Concept and Methodology: Data are from household surveys by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, and national statistical offices. The surveys yield data on education, employment, health, expenditure, and consumption indicators related to children's work. Since children's work is captured in the sense of "economic activity," the data refer to children in employment, a broader concept than child labor (see ILO 2009a for details on this distinction). Household survey data generally include information on work type - for example, whether a child is working for payment in cash or in kind or is involved in unpaid work, working for someone who is not a member of the household, or involved in any type of family work (on the farm or in a business).

Periodicity: Annual