Today, I came across (HT @devthoughtRO ) this fresh and insightful article by Alison Rabe at WhyDev. In reading it, I found it to be a very well articulated justification with many of the thoughts I have encountered from tourists and friends from abroad here in Cambodia, and I feel it is worth a read for no other reason then to see the moral and emotional side of what drives the instinct to give and help.
That said, I fear that it mixes up the points and justifications behind the widely given advice to not give money/ buy from children on the street with the explanation being a bit of a strawman. Since my response is a bit long, I have put it up here instead of as a comment. While I can empathize greatly with the emotions and drive of the author, I fear that for the most part she has missed the hard, cold, at times counter-intuitive, underpinnings of what drive children working on the streets. And, more importantly, it misses the true, practical reasons why we constantly and consistently say “do not give money.”
And Economics, Sadly, Is Not Moral
The main reason that one should not provide money to children selling things on the street or begging is simply one of economic incentives, especially since people are likely to buy/give with children as opposed to adults in such cases. A child being able to make money through sales/begging on the street actually is given an incentive to spend more time doing so and NOT to go to school (statistical details can be found here on the effects of child labor on education http://www.ilo.org/ipecinfo/product/viewProduct.do?productId=8390).
Moreover, the fact that a child is not a free-agent but often under the control of an adult makes this relationship even more complicated. Since a child is more easily controlled and can get a premium (more sales and/or large sums paid) than an adult from tourists, there develops a market for children since an adult can make more renting children and then managing them to sale items or beg to make a profit. Most of the children you see, especially in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap are not working on their own to make money for school, but usually working for an adult (usually within the area watching) to whom the money goes and usually payment then made to families/other guardians of the child. In such case, giving money actually leads to these children becoming capital assets (objects) for adults, which can be said to truly be dehumanizing from a moral standpoint. Above all, this also leads to the trafficking of children for begging, especially to Thailand and other places as well as Cambodia, no to mention the risks and health effects of such dangerous work that the children are exposed to even if not trafficked (see Chab Dai and other NGOs for details on that).
Of Dorians and Proh-hok
The problem with the author’s analogy on voter theory, is that, first, the case of giving money to children is not a disincentive to do a good action but rather an attempt to prevent a bad one. If we assume a hypothetical where all people went against the recommendation in the voter theory case and voted, there is a positive social effect; everyone votes. If we think of a hypothetical where everyone gave into the urge to buy and give money to children on the streets, the amount of children on selling/begging would increase (due to incentives) and the amount of children being used for profit would increase (incentives again), and the amount of children pulled out of school or sent to the big cities to sell/beg would increase (must incentives be so cruel??). This is a completely negative social effect, so really the comparison doesn’t hold. Secondly and perhaps most importantly, this really isn’t a political economy situation; this is a straight up market economics situation (supply-demand). So, really, the analogy is an dorian vs. proh-hok comparison (i.e. apples and oranges). What must then be looked at, is not the analogy, but the actual effects of the action.
Simply Said
So to summarize completely in one sentence, this is not a symbolism situation, this is a straight incentive and demand creator for child labor and children to not be in school and instead be in a dangerous working situation.
So with this in mind, let me just go through the pros – cons again:
To buy:
Pro: The kid smiles and probably even gets excited. And the person giving will likely feel good from this and about themselves; it is our desire as moral beings.
Con: The happiness, though perhaps genuine, is fleeting. Also, this is quite a bit more for the benefit of the person giving than perhaps the child.
Pro: The kid has some money, maybe to go to school, maybe to eat. Education and food are good things, but this assumes, rather naively, that they child actually has control over the money.
Con: Maybe not. You’ll never know where the money goes though it almost never goes/stays with the child but to a middleman or their parents who now has just got a huge incentive to NOT send the child to school since the child is making money on the streets; probably more money that the parent/guardian could make through their work or doing the same as the child.
Pro: It creates a positive interaction between you and another person that would not have happened otherwise. (See the “Not Buy” section, this exposure to strangers on the street is NOT good for child nor interactions like this in this context.)
Con: The child is being exposed to strangers with differing morals and intentions constantly, which leads to incredibly high rates of sexual assaults, abuse and trafficking (see ChildSafe reports for details).
…or not to buy:
Pro: Actually, there is no symbolism, you are paying the child to stay working on the street and the more money that they can make doing so the less likely they will be able to go to school. If more people gave money to children on the streets, more children will be put on the streets to sell and beg. This is why there are high rates of children being in the streets instead of school in the tourist hubs but less so in places such as Ratanakiri or Preah Vihear (less tourist = less profits for children being on street instead of school = less demand for children = less children selling/begging).
Con: The child doesn’t make money for parent or middle man so family income may be effected.
Pro: You are not creating an incentive for children to be made to sell things to strangers on the street. If this leads to a decrease demand for children to do this work (since there is less money incentive [they don’t put the kids on the street if no benefit financially], children being exposed to sexual abuse, trafficking, and many other health and safety risks, which are high for children selling or begging on the streets, will be decreased.
Con: Child will not be able to meet wonderful, charitable strangers on the streets together with pedophiles, drug addicts, child traffickers and others that they would also be encountering constantly.
Pro: You will not be putting money into a child exploitation system. Forget about 14yo in factories, there is a real and documented market for children of more younger ages created because they can bring in money on the streets and even a market for babies because a woman or child carrying a baby can get a lot more money on the street than one without. Every dollar you pay for that continues the system and incentivizes its expansion.
Con: You end up with extra money in your pocket. Perhaps you should donate it to organizations like ChildSafe that help the children trafficked and exploited in this industry now.
Pro: You do not make eye contact and interact with a child on the street teaching them to trust unknown strangers. By them not immediately trusting unknown strangers in their dangerous area of work, this will make it less likely that they will trust not so well intentioned people who may want to molest, exploit or traffic them.
Con: You feel guilty about not making eye contact or being friendly, but then again it really is better for the child so who cares how YOU feel in this situation.
Pro: Even by doing nothing and not giving the child money your are helping the children of Cambodia and, if everyone did the same, that one child would definitely be helped as well if they were no longer be put on the street to meet the demand giving them money creates. “First, do no harm.”
Con: You will not have that feel good moment of personal gratification for helping that you would get from your action, even though it would have hurt children as a whole if you had done so.
Dev Econ Health 
I agree with your position here, except in the case of the voter theory. Unless I’ve understood you wrong, Alison’s point was the reverse: that people choose NOT to buy from kids as a symbolic act, just as people choose TO vote as a symbolic act. In both cases, if I alone choose to commit these “symbolic” acts, there’s no effect on the outcome. If everyone took the same action as me, the net effect would be positive in both cases: in one, a political party or leader is elected who represents my views; in the other, no one buys from children anymore, and the incentive is removed, leading children to stop selling things on the street. Both of these are optimal.
But in the case of the kids, everybody else’s actions never change – not enough people vote for my party for them to ever get in. Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, kids are still selling stuff and adults are still buying from them. All those kids will still be out there tomorrow, whether *I* buy from them today or not. So if I happen to know this one kid over here, and I know he really does use the money he earns to go to school or to support his orphaned younger siblings, I’m helping him out by buying a bracelet from him.
But most kids AREN’T using their money to go to school, most kids ARE being exploited and controlled by adults, and most people (tourists, expats, and locals alike) don’t know each kid well enough to know who’s who. We all make our own decisions about how to support people we know personally, but for those we don’t know, better to play it safe and stick with directing that support through an NGO.
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I strongly agree with the overall view of the writer, but some issues I feel have been presented simplistically. Let me touch on some grey areas to deepen the debate.
There is the unexplored assumption that the education system in Cambodia is inherently valuable, and that it is free. In general, the educational experience in rural Cambodia is extremely poor. Not only is the quality of teaching very low, but students routinely have to pay bribes and learn to cheat and bribe their way through the system. If they can’t afford the bribes they stay home. Many – I think most – of the child booksellers on the Riverside of Phnom Penh attend low-cost private schools for a couple of hours per day in the city, paid for by the proceeds of their sales, or sponsored by altruistic foreigners.
Secondly, whilst I have come across cases of the children being groomed and abused by tourists, the vast majority of child abuse happens in the home or home village by locals. The parent who chooses to exploit his child through labour may not be an ideal parent in a domestic situation especially when without income. In addition, as is pointed out, the children are supervised by the parents, so any abuse by a foreigner is likely to be with the knowledge/consent of the parent – the same parent who might otherwise be responsible for that child’s welfare.
I stress again, I don’t bring up these points to justify child exploitation, but to bring some practical nuances to the debate.
Thanks for the points Andy. Yes, it is a very complicated issue and there are many different aspects to consider but I wanted to keep my blog response as short and concise as possible so readers don’t get overwhelmed though there is so much I wish I could address. As you may note in our blog description, we will be dealing with the very technical, detailed side of issues in future posts. As a matter of fact there is a regression analysis of a rural poor education program that will be up in the next couple days.
That said, I think that there may be some issues with your observations that I would like to address, so lets go through them real quick.
First, lets note that “child book sellers on the riverfront” is a very, very, very small segment of the children selling and begging in Phnom Penh. While these children may be attending some private schools in some hours (the data I have seen seems to indicate the number that do are still low even in that select sample) it is not a complete education and unless they complete the necessary government approved full private or public programs, they will not be able to move into secondary schooling. Despite what may be said about how horrible the educational system is, the completion of primary and secondary school has very significant economic, income and mobility effects which they will be at a disadvantage without despite the temporary income they may gain.
Moreover, based on the surveys by the ILO and NGOs such as ChildSafe, the vast majority of children working in the streets are not obtaining sufficient or any education and this is compared to the normal rates. From the 2006 ILO analysis of Child Labor determinants and effects on education, “worse case child labor” which includes selling on the street and begging, has the most negative impact on education. This holds true even when compared to equivalent children in the countryside (same poverty status, age, background, etc.). The major actual cause is that type of child labor they are engaged in and the incentives them to devote more time to such labor.
On the point of education in the countryside, I don’t think it is as bad as you think, though I am not saying it is good. Kids not attending school because of bribes is fairly uncommon due to the way the system works (teachers need to keep up their attendance roles for funds, and a student not paying anything (even if it is bringing a handful of rice for a bribe) and staying home makes the teacher lose money/benefit). Usually, the problem is that the quality of education is lower in the primary school with more high quality instruction given in private tutoring afterwards. This is not really my opinion, but based on project surveys we have had in Ratanakiri and Kratie, and national data as well as data/results provided by the translator of this blog who is an officer of the Ministry of Education and assigned to the World Bank Scholarship Program for disadvantaged, poor students.
And truthfully, even this more detailed discussion of education is a bit superficial as we are not even dealing with the signaling role of education in the economy and its effects on jobs and mobility. As simply as can be said for now, education is a good thing and important/beneficial for children’s long-term progression and this is far more likely to be achieved by not working in the streets selling, and the evidence shows that doing such work actually decreases (not increases) the possibility of their schooling despite the common sense thought that money would go to schooling (not that these studies control for poverty effects so its not an omitted variable manifestation).
Finally, on the point of child abuse and exploitation risks I think there is some data mix-ups occurring here so let me try and wade through the data a bit and provide some perspective.
First, does most child abuse happen at home or in local communities? Yes, this is true, but really doesn’t shed much light on this situation.
Why is that so? Because of our samples under consideration are different. The number of children between the ages of 0-14 years old is around 3 million by current estimates; the number of children working or begging on the streets is estimated at between 50,000 – 100,000 based on ILO surveys and possibly as high as 200,000 by other estimates. Given normal rates of child abuse within the population, even if 100% of the children working in the streets were abused, the number of children abused at home or in their local communities would still be larger than the number of children in the streets. By the same logic, we could say in the US that most traffic accidents occur within 5 miles of a persons house. But that would not make driving 100mph in another city safer nor tell us anything about the risk of doing so.
Its the same in this case. All of the data, research and evidence both by ILO and local NGO shows that children working in the streets (a sub-sample of the population) have higher risks of sexual abuse and physical abuse then the general population due to their work. Some surveys have shown rates at around 50% of street children experiencing sexual molestation while the general population is around 25% at most. Whether we would expect their handlers (important to note the people watching the children usually are not their parents but their “managers”) to protect them or not, the results show that this is not occurring. So the main point is that the facts show these are real risks of abuse and corresponding outcomes despite what we might expect or think should occur for whatever reason. Also, I think we should be careful in labeling the perpetrators as “foreigners” as these children are exposed to foreign and domestic individuals/predators alike in the course of their work.
So, to summarize, is education bad in Cambodia? Yes.
Is education important and completion key to economic mobility and success despite the quality issues? Yes.
Does working making money in the streets help children’s education? The evidence resoundingly says NO despite our anecdotes and common sense.
Does most child abuse occur at home or in local community? Yes.
Are children working in the street at higher risk of abuse than children not working in the street? Very much yes and putting them in those situations makes them more likely to be abused just as putting them in the middle of Monivong Blvd. makes it more likely they will get hit by a car than other children.
On one final note, I think it is important to not immediately assume that a parent that puts a child to work is a bad parent as there are many situations and factors that we cannot even fathom in such a moral judgment. What we can say is that it is not good for the child and that these situations should be prevented to the greatest extent possible and definitely not incentivized by giving money.
Not to disagree too much, but I just wanted to get this info out as these are common perceptions and misperceptions that need to be addressed. I think that on the basic and most important fundamental issues we agree.
A very detailed response, most of which I’ll take your word for. On the education issue, though, I have to say that things are a little more grim than you’ve outlined here. I work in education in Cambodia’s northeast, where I work closely with teachers, school directors, and the Provincial Office of Education, Youth, and Sport.
My experience here is that attendance records are NOT kept, but that they are pulled out of thin air once a year when they have to be submitted to the government. The school director plays along and inflates enrolment/attendance numbers, because it is the school that gets the money based on the number of students, not the teacher. By the end of the school year, there’s only a small fraction of the original number of students left, even though their budget is still dispersed as though their numbers haven’t changed.
Teachers hold “part-time classes” during school hours (generally the second half of the regular class), which contain the meat of the curriculum, and which students have to pay for. If they don’t have money, they go home. These students have a much harder time learning anything and progressing in school, and they are the ones most likely to be gone by February.
As you said, this level of detail in education is superfluous, but it does give an indication as to the (lack of) opportunities available to kids other than selling. Mind you, the educational opportunities are light years ahead in Phnom Penh, where most selling to tourists is taking place.
Reblogged this on On The Road Again and commented:
A great read on why or why not to give to children working the streets etc.