THE EFFECTS OF THE CHILD LABOR LAW IN THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEAST REGION

Abstract

Considered one of the most advanced acts of legislation concerning child labor in the world, Brazilian legislation on the matter is regulated in the country’s 1988 Federal Constitution, in the Consolidation of Labor Laws and in the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent. Businesses and/or individuals who hire workers under the age of 16 are subjected to penalties under those laws. Thus, this work uses a quasi-experiment generated from the Brazilian legislation in order to capture the effects of the child labor law as it is applied in the Northeast region of Brazil. Using data from the Continuous National Household Survey of 2017, we estimate the local average treatment effects obtained through regressions with discontinuity. The results indicate there is not a considerable influence of the law on child labor, even though a small reduction in hours worked can be observed, in 1.7 hour, 1.3 hour and 1.7 hour, respectively, when analyzing the Northeast region of Brazil as a whole, and analyzing the Urban and Rural areas separately. Was also verified that by 2017 there are more than 103,000 children and adolescents under the age of 16 who are in the job market of the Northeast region of Brazil.