School Drop-out and Push-out Factors in Brazil : The Role of Early Parenthood, Child Labor, and Poverty
This paper aims to identify the major drop-out and push-out factors that lead to school abandonment in an urban surrounding-the shantytowns of Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil. The authors use an extensive survey addressing risk factors faced by the pop...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/03/7475050/school-drop-out-push-out-factors-brazil-role-early-parenthood-child-labor-poverty http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7228 |
| Summary: | This paper aims to identify the major
drop-out and push-out factors that lead to school
abandonment in an urban surrounding-the shantytowns of
Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil. The authors use an extensive
survey addressing risk factors faced by the population in
these neighborhoods, which cover both in-school and
out-of-school youth of both genders. They focus on the role
of early parenthood, child labor, and poverty in pushing
teenagers out of school. The potential endogeneity of some
of the determinants is dealt with in the empirical analysis.
The authors take advantage of the rich set of variables
available and apply an instrumental variables approach.
Early parenthood is instrumented with the age declared by
the youngsters as the ideal age to start having sexual
relationships. Work is instrumented using the declared
reservation wage (minimum salary acceptable to work).
Results indicate that early parenthood has a strong impact
of driving teenagers out of school. Extreme poverty is
another factor lowering school attendance, as children who
have suffered hunger at some point in their lives are less
likely to attend school. In this particular urban context,
working does not necessarily have a detrimental effect on
school attendance, which could be linked to the fact that
dropping out of school leads most often to inactivity and
not to work. |
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