IU to sponsor child labor conference

The IU Department of Economics and the India Studies Program will sponsor a conference about child labor in India on Thursday and Friday in Wylie Hall.\nThe 2006 Child Labor Conference will include a variety of perspectives from selected speakers, said Gerhard Glomm, professor and chair of the economics department. Five speakers from IU, including Glomm, will present at the conference, along with five others from other universities and organizations that specialize in economics.\nThe goal of the conference is to understand child labor issues better and to figure out policies that can be put into place to combat it, Glomm said. \nIndia is the prime focus of the conference because two of the scholars in the economics department selected had written papers regarding the child labor crisis in India, Glomm said. The issue of child labor is crucial to understand because kids are going to work in other countries instead of getting an education, he said. By gathering various experts to discuss this, more light will be shed on the problem, and beneficial solutions may arise.\n"Child labor is one of the biggest policy problems around anywhere," Glomm said.\nGlomm said India is an appropriate focus since most of its citizens are farmers; they must depend on the weather for whatever profit they get. If there is a bad crop, children must work in factories instead of going to school in order to earn enough money for their families to survive, he said.\nThe conference runs from 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday and will resume 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday. Topics to be discussed include "Buying Out Child Labor" and "The Ten Year Consequences of Child Labor"