Although recent news about the status of child labor is positive, see ILO (2006), there remains important shortcomings to be researched. Among them, the exclusion of the category “idle children” (those who neither work nor study) from past studies, as well as the lack of reliable information on returns to education are two important omissions. By using a data base that contains details on idle children and a proxy for the (subjective) returns to education, a multinomial logit model of child labor is estimated. The results con?rm traditional ?ndings as both the strong positive effect of parental background and the positive relationship between number of children in the household on child labor. Also, our estimates points out to new insights, such as the fact that the Body Mass Index effect is positive, the high sensitivity of the state Work and Study from changes in independent variables and the great regional variation of estimates