Dynamics of Child Labor: Labor-Force Entry and Exit in Urban Brazil

Jasper Hoek, Suzanne Duryea, David Lam and Deborah Levison

Chapter 4 in Child Labor and Education in Latin America, 2009, pp 69-86 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Relatively little is known about the dynamics of children’s labor-force work, although child labor has been a subject of research and policy discussion since the days of Europe’s Industrial Revolution (Edmonds, 2008). Small case studies from Latin America and elsewhere suggest that children tend to move in and out of different jobs, and in and out of the labor force, to a much greater extent than do adults. Still, policy discussions of child labor often seem to have an underlying unstated assumption that most children work long hours in jobs that, like those of adults, continue steadily from day-to-day and from week-to-week. Even if the jobs change, children are imagined to find other jobs immediately, because of the pressing needs generated by poverty. In this chapter, we report the results of an analysis of nearly twenty years of panel data for metropolitan Brazil, showing that employed children frequently stop work, then start working again—a phenomenon we call “intermittent employment.” Children’s tendency to work intermittently is reflected by differential employment levels, depending on the time interval used, and by monthly employment entry and exit rates. We use estimates of entry and exit rates and how they change over time to better understand the downward trend in employment levels that we document.

Keywords: Employment Rate; Child Labor; Exit Rate; Employment Level; Entry Rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Dynamics of child labor: labor force entry and exit in urban Brazil (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-62010-0_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230620100

DOI: 10.1057/9780230620100_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().