Street child work in Latin American capitals

Objective. To identify the age, sex, mobility, education, work activity, working hours, street dwelling, and social security coverage in a group of children working in the streets in capital cities in Latin America. Material and Methods. Cross sectional study. A questionnaire was applied to 972 chil...

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Autores:
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2006
Institución:
Universidad del Rosario
Repositorio:
Repositorio EdocUR - U. Rosario
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repository.urosario.edu.co:10336/23260
Acceso en línea:
https://repository.urosario.edu.co/handle/10336/23260
Palabra clave:
Adolescent
Article
Child
Controlled study
Female
Guatemala
Human
Human experiment
Infant
Male
Mexico
Questionnaire
Social security
Socioeconomics
South and central america
Urban population
Work capacity
Working time
Adolescent
Child
Cross-sectional studies
Employment
Female
Homeless youth
Humans
Infant
Latin america
Male
Urban population
Child labor
Latin america
Street labor
Working conditions
Working hours
preschool
Child
Rights
License
Abierto (Texto Completo)
Description
Summary:Objective. To identify the age, sex, mobility, education, work activity, working hours, street dwelling, and social security coverage in a group of children working in the streets in capital cities in Latin America. Material and Methods. Cross sectional study. A questionnaire was applied to 972 children working in the streets of Bogotá, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Quito and San Salvador. Results. A total of 63.3% subjects were boys; 39% were children from displaced families; 18% lived in the streets; 62% worked more than 40 hours per week; 19% were covered by the social security system, and 32% were street vendors. The behavior of variables differed significantly by city. Conclusion. Child labor in the streets is a dangerous activity characterized by long working hours and exposure to risk factors. Child work has different characteristics in each of the cities studied, which suggests that the solution to the problem must be designed on a case by case basis.