While it’s unclear how many children currently work in Afghanistan’s mining industry, what is known is that child labor overall has grown significantly in the last year. A survey of more than 10,000 households by a coalition of aid organizations found that the number of Afghan families with male heads of household reporting at least one child working jumped from 13% in 2021 to 21% in 2022. For families with female heads of household, those figures increased from 19% in 2021 to 29% in 2022.