Child labor and school attendance in Bolivia
Previous posts presented data on primary and secondary school attendance in Bolivia, one of UNICEF's 25 priority countries for girls' education . With a primary school net attendance rate of 76.4 percent, Bolivia is not close to the Millennium Development Goal of a full course of primary schooling for all children by 2015. There are several obstacles on the way to universal primary education and one of these obstacles is child labor. Child labor can harm a child's health and, even if not harmful, it can interfere with school attendance. The latest data on school attendance for Bolivia comes from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted in 2003/04. The DHS did not collect data on work by children but such data is available from a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) that was carried out in 2000. The graph and table below present the share of children aged 5 to 14 years who attend school or are engaged in child labor. School attendance is defined as attending an...