Impact evaluation of bolsa escola programs on child labor in Brazil. / Avaliação do impacto dos programas de bolsa escola no trabalho infantil no Brasil.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2004

RESUMO

There is a consensus in the literature that if a child works his/her level of schooling will decrease and consequently he/she will receive lower wages in adult life, forcing their children to work to guarantee family subsistence. Based on the hypothesis that children work to complement family income, the initiatives to eradicate child labor helps to diminish the differences between the poor and non-poor. The minimum income for school attendance programs – like bolsa escola in Brazil - in general do not request formally that the child quits his/her job to receive the benefit. However, since school attendance is mandatory, which reduces the available time for other activities, and there is a cash transfer that substitutes the child’s income from work, the decrease in the labor market participation is a spillover effect of the program, whose objectives are to stimulate the demand for formal education and to alleviate current poverty. As a way to evaluate the impact of the bolsa escola programs on the child labour in Brazil, based on microdata from PNAD 2001, a regression model was estimated by weighted least squares for the weekly hours worked by children and a probit model for the family’s decision of children’s participation in the labor force. It is possible to conclude that the program is really efficient to decrease children’s weekly hours of work, but the test for participation in the labor force was inconclusive. An additional bolsa has diminished in two hours the weekly hours worked by children in rural areas and in three hours in urban areas.

ASSUNTO(S)

trabalho de menor bolsa-escola social policy política social child labor

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