Gender Dimensions of Child Labor and Street Children in Brazil

Abstract

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.