Socio-Economic Determinants of Juvenile Crime among Street Children and Teenagers in a Brazilian State

Summary

This article is published in Economics Bulletin and is free to read online.

We investigate the determinants of juvenile crime among street children and teenagers in the Minas Gerais state (Brazil). Our dataset consists of 3.028 questionnaires applied to children and teenagers found on the streets of the 21 largest cities in the state. We have estimated a Logit model, which enabled us to identify the correlation between several variables and juvenile crime. The found results show that younger males attending school and that haven’t been subject to violence themselves are less inclined to commit crime. Contrary to common belief, we found that conditional transfers and other government programs do not have a direct effect on reducing crime rates among children and teenagers living or working on the streets.