Street children in North and Latin America: Preliminary data fromproyecto alternativos in Tegucigalpa and some comparisons with the U.S. case

The decade of the 1980s witnessed a dramatic transformation in the character of homelessness in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world. Whereas in previous decades the U.S. homeless were predominantly older, largely white, brokendown alcoholic men (or at least were stereotypified as such), today a sizable fraction are women and children. Indeed, women, children, and youth now comprise more than three-eighths of the total homeless population of the United States (Wright 1989). As the U.S. homeless have come to be comprised of proportionally more women and children, so have they come more and more to resemble the street populations of the Third World, where homelessness, family disorganization, exploitation, and abandonment of children have become increasingly important problems during the past decade.