Neoliberal capitalism has generalized the poverty that forces many families to resort to the work of their children to guarantee subsistence. Work results in the children abandoning school and as adults, as a consequence of their lack of formal education, they will only be able to accede to the worse paid occupations requiring low qualification and receiving low wages. As a result, they will probably be the parents of new children workers reproducing intergenerational poverty. Education is the first step in breaking the vicious circle of poverty. There is a correlation between the levels of education and those of remuneration which people can attain. Development depends on accelerated technological change which is no more than scientific knowledge applied to production. The creation of knowledge presupposes higher education whose foundation is elementary education which is the platform of any model of development that aspires to equity. Not educating children signifies wasting the formation of human capital which, in its turn, brakes national development. Without education it will be impossible to qualify human capital, understood as the basic motor of productivity and competitiveness.
neoliberal capitalism; child labour; lack of school support; school drop-out
