Street Children and Gendered Health Consequences

Millions of children spend a majority of their time working and living on the streets without adequate adult supervision. These street children are exposed to many health risks due to poverty, hazardous work, lack of service access, and abuse. This exposure is also highly gendered within the street child population. Boys make up the vast majority of street children and therefore are more exposed to many of these risks. Girls are less likely to enter into street life, but once they are there, they are at elevated risk for poor physical and mental health. While research on street children's exposure to health risks has advanced in recent decades, there is a lack of gender-disaggregated data. The little data that exist suggest that boys are more likely to be addicted to drugs while girls suffer from more mental illness, sexual health problems, and general physical ailments.