Gender Dimensions of Child Labor and Street Children in Brazil
The authors review child labor and the situation of street children in Brazil from a gender perspective. Relying primarily on Brazil's national household survey for 1996, the authors examine various dimensions of child labor by gender, includi...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/10/2028952/gender-dimensions-child-labor-street-children-brazil http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19228 |
| Summary: | The authors review child labor and the
situation of street children in Brazil from a gender
perspective. Relying primarily on Brazil's national
household survey for 1996, the authors examine various
dimensions of child labor by gender, including
participation, intensity, and type of activities; the
relationship between child labor, education, and future
earnings; and the risks of child labor to health and
well-being. They also summarize approaches to prevent and
eliminate child labor and street children in Brazil. The
authors find that more boys than girls work in Brazil
especially in rural areas where boys are concentrated in the
agricultural sector, that many children both work and attend
school, and that girls attain higher levels of education
than boys on average, even when considering number of hours
worked. The exception is the 11-14 category. They also find
that an individual's earnings are correlated with age
of entry into the labor market. The earlier a child begins
to work, the lower his or her earnings. And girls are more
adversely affected by early labor force entry than boys,
with the gender differential increasing the earlier a child
begins to work. Taking poverty as the primary contributor to
child labor, government programs to combat child labor are
well designed in that they compensate families for a
child's foregone earnings and address family factors
that lead to poverty. However, programs could be improved by
explicitly considering the gender dimensions of child labor.
The authors point to the need for analysis of the impact of
child labor on health, and specifically to the gender and
sex-differentiated impacts. They suggest the need to address
gender in intervention strategies for street children, as
well as research on child labor in domestic service where
girls are overrepresented. |
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