Child Labor and injury occurrence in Nicaragua: A Gender perspective analysis

Introduction
The aims of this study are: 1) To describe the occurrence and estimate the risk of suffering injuries of any kind, specially work related injuries (WRIs), in rural children working in agricultural activities and in urban children working on the street, in comparison to non-working children; and 2) to explore gender related factors that might be associated with the occurrence of WRIs among child workers, such as sex differences on school attendance and performance of household chore.

Methods
We performed a crossectional interview study among working children in agricultural activities and on the street and in non-working referents in February 2009. We investigated self-reported injuries occurred during the last 12 months, especially work related injuries. Incidence rate, rate ratios and 95% CI were calculated by Poisson regression.

Results
Agricultural workers have a higher incidence of WRIs (2.1 per 1000 person-days) than children working on the street (1.8 per 1000 person-days). However when taking into account girl’s unpaid work at home girls had higher occurrence. Girls had a 30% increase on the risk of suffering WRIs compared to boys. Performing household chore and attending school were the majors predictor of injury occurrence.

Discussion
Our data suggest If such partial and full-time girl’s housework is taken into account, there would be little or no variation between the sexes with regard to injuries occurrence, and the incidence rate of WRIs among girls could even exceed that of boys A greater understanding of the interaction of factors related to how child workers spend their time, and its impact on children’s health, is needed in order to identify feasible and appropriate strategies to reduce the negative effect of work on children, when elimination of child labor is not reachable in the short term. Clearly, gender aspects on child labour may allow for more effective targeting of prevention efforts.