Poverty and Child Labour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: An Analysis of Socioeconomic Drivers, Educational Exclusion, and Policy Interventions

Abstract

Child labour is a widespread social problem in Pakistan, where more than 12.5 million children are involved in economic activities in different sectors (The Daily Times, 2025; The Express Tribune, 2025). This research paper analyzes that there is a relationship between poverty and child labour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan, based on various recent empirical studies, official government records, and theoretical constructs of development economics and sociology. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in particular, 11.1% of the provincial child population are working children with the laggards in the Swat and Kurram districts being the most frequently hit by environmental degradation, poverty, and cultural norms forcing their families to withdraw their children out of school and force them into labour as a survival strategy (Sadiq, 2025; Turi & Khan, 2025; The Daily Times, 2025). The discussion shows that poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon: it compels households to focus on the urgent economic needs at the expense of children receiving education, it imposes opportunity costs that make schooling a costly experience for poor families, and it keeps children in the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Other causative factors are parental illiteracy (Abdul Ghaffar & Enam, 2025), family size (Turi & Khan, 2025), laxity in child labour legislation, and economic distress caused by climate, which influences the household use of labour (Sadiq, 2025). Possible intervention avenues are policy reactions such as the Waseela-e-Taleem conditional cash transfers of the Benazir Income Support Programme, the Child Labour Schools of Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal, and constitutional guarantees under Article 11(3) (Newsdesk, 2025a, 2025b, 2025c). The paper put forward evidence-based suggestions on the reduction of poverty, access to education, enforcement of the law, and coordinated governance.

Keywords: Child labour, poverty, educational exclusion, hazardous work, child rights, Districts Swat and Kurram, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.