Today is International Literacy Day, a reminder that literacy isn’t just an achievement—it’s a lifeline. Yet for too many children around the world, that lifeline is cut short by the grinding realities of child labor.

The Vicious Cycle: Child Labor and Illiteracy

Globally, around 138 million children were engaged in child labor in 2024, with 54 million involved in hazardous work that jeopardizes their health and development  These children are often locked out of classrooms, trapped in a relentless cycle: no school → no skills → no prospects.

An article in today’s The Times of India cites an alarming study from Ludhiana, India — revealing that some neighborhoods have school enrollment as low as 3.7%, as most children are dragged into hosiery factories, rag-picking, or domestic drudgery.  These are not statistics—they are stolen childhoods.

Why Literacy Is the Weapon Against Poverty

Illiteracy is not a personal failure—it’s systemic.

Children of illiterate parents have a 72% chance of remaining illiterate themselves, perpetuating poverty across generations. In places like Bangladesh, about 50% of working children don’t attend school, and many of those who do see their performance collapse under the weight of labor.

It’s not hard to see why the powerless remain powerless: illiterate adults are far more likely to fall into poverty—43% of the least literate adults in the U.S. live below the poverty line, compared to just 4% among the most literate.

Business: Villain or Victor?

When companies benefit from the cheap labor of an uneducated child, they help sustain cycles of illiteracy and exploitation.

But businesses can also be champions of literacy—through ethical supply chains, vocational education programs, and investment in schooling infrastructure. In West Africa, cocoa industry initiatives reduced hazardous child labor by up to one-third, thanks to monitoring and remediation efforts driven by major corporations.

Without such commitment, the pace of progress remains painfully slow—at current velocities, eliminating child labor could take centuries.