School Drop-Out And Push-Out Factors In Brazil : The Role Of Early Parenthood, Child Labor, And Poverty

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit company supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper aims at identifying the major drop-out and push-out factors that lead to school abandonment in an urban surrounding, the shantytowns of Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil. We use an extensive survey addressing risk factors faced by the population in these neighborhoods, which covered both in-school and out-of-school youth, of both genders. The role of early parenthood, child labor, and poverty in pushing teenagers out of school is subject to particular attention. The potential endogeneity of some of the determinants is dealt with in the empirical analysis. We 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 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. JEL Classification:I21, O15, D1

A Brighter Future: The Impact of Rural School Electrification Programs on the Dropout Rate in Primary Education in Brazil

“…Despite great improvement in the last decade, school dropout rates remain a relevant issue, especially for rural schools. Dropout rates are much higher among poorer families (Leon and Menezes-Filho, 2002;Ney, Souza and Ponciano, 2010), working students (Leon and Menezes-Filho, 2002;Verner and Cardoso, 2007) and low-performing students (Leon and Menezes-Filho, 2002) in Brazil. These three issues match the profile of rural communities that are a part of the Light for All program (or LFA, Programa Luz para Todos, in Portuguese).…”