School Drop-out and Push-out Factors in Brazil : The Role of Early Parenthood, Child Labor, and Poverty

Rute Cardoso, Ana ; Verner, Dorte

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNT;    ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION;    BIRTH RATES;    CHILD LABOR;    CHILD LABOUR;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4178
RP-ID  :  WPS4178

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper aims to identify the majordrop-out and push-out factors that lead to schoolabandonment in an urban surrounding-the shantytowns ofFortaleza, Northeast Brazil. The authors use an extensivesurvey addressing risk factors faced by the population inthese neighborhoods, which cover both in-school andout-of-school youth of both genders. They focus on the roleof early parenthood, child labor, and poverty in pushingteenagers out of school. The potential endogeneity of someof the determinants is dealt with in the empirical analysis.The authors take advantage of the rich set of variablesavailable and apply an instrumental variables approach.Early parenthood is instrumented with the age declared bythe youngsters as the ideal age to start having sexualrelationships. Work is instrumented using the declaredreservation wage (minimum salary acceptable to work).Results indicate that early parenthood has a strong impactof driving teenagers out of school. Extreme poverty isanother factor lowering school attendance, as children whohave suffered hunger at some point in their lives are lesslikely to attend school. In this particular urban context,working does not necessarily have a detrimental effect onschool attendance, which could be linked to the fact thatdropping out of school leads most often to inactivity andnot to work.