Work, Study, Both or Neither? Time Allocation of Brazilian Teenagers

Simone Wajnman, Princeton University
Maria Carolina Leme, Fundação Getulio Vargas

Labor force participation among youth is extremely high in Brazil when compared to countries with a similar economic background. On the other hand, the data on school attendance give a more optimistic picture. The percentage of children, between 10 and 14 years old, enrolled in school increased from 79% to 95% from 1981 to 1998. The objective of this paper is to understand the determinants of the time allocation decision of the Brazilian youth during the last twenty years. Using a multinomial logit regression we investigate the conditional effect of various micro and macro variables on the time allocation decision for the 1991 to 1998 period. Our main findings are: working and studying became the most likely allocation among the youngest in the poor rural areas and, in general, to study, whether working or not, became less dependent on family background for the youngest group but not for the older.