Children in double vulnerability: the impacts of natural disasters on child labor and educational outcomes in Brazil

• Ano de defesa: 2025
• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Priscila Soares dos
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Causal inference; Child labor; Desastres; Disasters; Educação; Education; Inferência causal; Trabalho infantil
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/11/11132/tde-04112025-094525/

Natural disasters, in addition to causing human and material losses, significantly affect the trajectory of economic and social development in affected populations. In the Brazilian context, these events have become increasingly frequent and intense, with direct implications for the well-being of the population, especially children and adolescents, who are among the most vulnerable groups. This dissertation investigates the effects of natural disasters on two critical dimensions of childhood and adolescence: child labor and educational achievement. Drawing on microdata from the Integrated Disaster Information System (S2ID) and the Basic Education Assessment System (Saeb), it comprises two empirical articles that apply different methodologies and levels of analysis. The first paper estimates the impacts of natural disasters on the prevalence of child labor in Brazil between 2013 and 2019. Using fixed effects panel models and quasi-experimental strategies, the study finds evidence that the occurrence of disasters is associated with an increase in child labor, particularly in municipalities with lower socioeconomic infrastructure. This suggests an adaptive response by families facing income loss or the destruction of assets. The second paper estimates the impacts of hydrological disasters on the educational outcomes of students in the 5th and 9th grades of primary education between 2013 and 2017. Using estimates based on the difference-in-differences approach with multiple time periods proposed by Callaway & Sant\'Anna (2021), combined with a pseudo-panel of individuals, the study finds significant learning losses in Portuguese and Mathematics following exposure to disasters, with more pronounced effects in the South and Southeast regions. Additionally, it explores heterogeneous effects by gender and race, showing that boys and white students experience greater absolute losses, although performance gaps between social groups remain stable.