[Urban work profile among adolescents aged 14-15 years: a population-based study in Southern Brazil]

The scope of this article was to describe the urban work patterns among 14 to 15-year-old youths from Southern Brazil. Child labor was characterized as any activity that resulted in retribution in the form of goods, services or money. The analyses were stratified by sex and economic level. Of the 4325 adolescents interviewed, the proportion of labor in the last year was 22.2%, namely 27.7% for the male sex, and 17% for the female sex. This proportion was also higher among the poorer strata of the population (30.0%) than the more affluent (14.3%). The majority of adolescents worked away from home and approximately half of them began working before 14 years of age, and around 80.0% reported that they worked by choice. Only 1.0% had a labor contract or work booklet, 30.0% worked more than six hours per day, and the average income was less than US$85/month. Domestic work predominated among the poorest teenagers. There is a need for greater surveillance of child labor and of interventions seeking to enforce prevailing legislation.