US child labor laws are the product of hard won gains in this country’s economic development.  Current child labor laws around the world are the product of decades of hard work by venerable organizations such as UNICEF and the International Labour Organization’s IPEC program to eradicate child labor. These organizations and others have extensively documented how child laborers lose opportunities twice over:  they lose educational opportunities as children and they lose opportunities to prosper as adults.  The US Department of Labor has likewise played a critical role in supporting programs to end child labor worldwide, and has identified how often child labor goes hand in hand with forced labor.