#2007-05 Intermittent Child Employment and Its Implications for Estimates of Child Labor

Abstract

This paper uses longitudinal data from urban Brazil to analyze intermittency in children’s work activity and the implications of this intermittency for estimates of child labor.  We follow the employment patterns of urban children ages 10-16 during 4 months in their lives. Different waves of the panel cover most of the 1980s and 1990s, providing information on the work activity of thousands of children. We document a large decline in child employment in the 1990s. An analysis of transition rates in and out of employment for young workers shows relatively high volatility in urban employment, with both higher exit rates and lower entry rates responsible for the decline in child employment. One important implication of this volatility is that the proportion of urban Brazilian children who work at some point during a four month period is substantially higher than the fraction observed working in any single month; movements in and out of employment are “normal” rather than exceptional. We calculate an intermittency multiplier to summarize the difference between employment rates in one reference week vs. four reference weeks over a 4-month period. We conclude that intermittent employment is a crucial characteristic of child labor which must be recognized in order to adequately capture levels of child employment and identify child workers.

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