This report is the result of the October 2001 survey on children (SOC). This survey was designed to collect information on the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of working children 5-17 years old through personal interviews. It used the new (1994) Philippine Standard Occupation Classification (PSOC) and Philippine Standard Industrial Classification (PSIC) in coding the reported occupation and industry of the working children, respectively.
The statistics emanating from this survey refer to the characteristics of the population residing in private households.
More than 10 million households were reported to have children 5-17 years old during the period October 1, 2000 to September 30, 2001, representing an increase of 9.3 percent from the 9.6 million households reported during the period July 1, 1994 to June 30, 1995. Four million (16.2 percent) of these children 5-17 years old were economically active. Working children 10-14 years old total 1.9 million (48.1 percent) and those aged 15-17 years total 1.8 million (45.7 percent). There were more male working children 5-17 years old (2.5 million or 63.4 percent) than female working children (1.5 million or 36.6 percent).
Seven out of every ten working children 5-17 years old resided in rural areas.
Forty percent of the working children 5-17 years old were elementary undergraduate and another 32 percent had reached high school. About 2.4 million or 59.4 percent of the 4.0 million working children were exposed to hazardous environment. Of those exposed, seven out of every ten were male working children.
The proportion of rural working children 5-17 years old exposed to physical/chemical/biological hazards (62.4 percent) was higher than their urban counterparts (52.4 percent).
Two in every five working children 5-17 years old stopped/dropped out of school. The ratio of male working children to female working children in terms of drop-out was 2:1. Dropping out of school was due to loss of interest of the child in going to school (31.4 percent or 461 households). Others complained that they could not afford to go to school (28.3 percent) because of high cost of schooling. Loss of interest in school was the primary reason among the working boys (37.4 percent) while high cost of schooling was for the working girls (41.4 percent).
Of the total working children 5-17 years old 92.3 percent enjoyed day-off or free time from work. Only 5 percent had no free time at all.
