Education, Work and Reproductive Health among Adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean

Copyright © 2013 Cristina Gomes. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons At-tribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Investments in education, work, and the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents and youth contrib-ute to their human development and autonomy, and guarantee that they will have their own resources and pensions for old age. In Latin America and the Caribbean 100 million adolescents aged 10 to 19 years demand schools and teachers in secondary education, employment and health services. This work de-scribes and analyses the situation of adolescents and youths in these three areas of interest, as a basis for defining priorities and the integration of policies oriented to take advantage of the demographic bonus and to enhance the sustainability of future dignified ageing for youth generations. Since Latin America and the Caribbean is the region with the highest inequality rates in the world, investing in demographic divi-dend can also contribute to decreasing inequalities in the long term. Secondary data from censuses, sur-veys and international organizations are analysed to relate to the three relevant issues of interest. Most than half of teens in Central America, and between 20 % and 40 % of adolescents in South America leave school before completing secondary level education and most of them receive poor quality education