Efeito dissuasivo da legislação sobre o trabalho infantil no Brasil

Abstract

Brazilian law prohibits all forms of work for children with age under 14 years old. Therefore, work done by children under 14 years of age are subject to sanctions as work done for over 14 years of age does not. We use this quasi-experiment generated by Brazilian law to test its deterrence effect. To this end, we use 2013 PNAD data to estimate the Local Average Treatment Effects (LATE) using the regression discontinuity approach. The results show that this law reduces on average 3.5 weekly working hours when all individuals living in all areas are considered, 2.7 hours in urban areas and inconclusive effects in rural areas. The paper concludes that the law has a deterrent effect and inhibits child labor in Brazil, but with ambiguous effects in rural areas, where there is less law enforcement and more children working.