In a predominantly agricultural economy like India, identffication and enumeration of children at work is a dfficult task. Yet both the Census and the NSS show that incidence of child labour and its volume declined over the I990s. Child labour is necessarily a social evil that needs to be abolished whatever its magnitude. In this paper we try to identify correlates of variation in the WPRs of boys and girls I0-14 years old in rural and urban oreas of I6 large states in India between 1993-94 and 1999-2000. This knowledge will help devise policies to remedy the social evil.