Or they can help their parents fix agriculture, develop local businesses, etc. The way I see it, those factories employing child labour are their primary tether to the global economy, which is bleeding them dry. Disconnected, they wouldn't have to compete with the rest of the world, and local economy would adjust. After all, at the level their local economy is, it's not dollars that matter, but man hours - and every country has the same amount per capita of those.

Yes and no. There does seem to be indication that ending child labor, without changing anything else, does lead to an immediate worsening of the situation for some children. But, this is in no way a justification for child exploitation and it also doesn't speak to the long term benefits of ending child labor.

If kids do not have enough food to eat, then the alternative to hard labor is death from starvation, not education.

Here's a great list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Or perhaps you'd like to observe how much populations have managed to grow after industrialization and modern economics: http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229

Child mortality is another fun one to look at it: http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-stati...

Traditional rural agrarian life is about as close as you can get to the Hobbesian state of nature. It's nasty, poor, brutish, and short. You pump out as many kids as you can in hopes that some will survive until they can work on the farm. (And make no mistake: child labor is essential to farm life.)

There's a reason that people pursue jobs in factories and migrate to urban areas. It might be terrible living conditions, but its still better than dying in your village. The only reason Western sensibilities condemn the former but eulogize the latter is because we feel "icky" that urban dwellers are benefiting us while starving farmers at least die without making anyone richer.