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considerably better; among the abandoned street children, only six percent ate three
meals a day.
Despite these differences, it is of considerable interest that researchers have found
second- and third-degree malnutrition only among the market children; they have seen no
such cases among the children of the street. It also needs to be mentioned that in the
Honduran context, the breakfast meal can consist of just coffee, bread, and lunch while
dinner might be nothing but tortillas and salt.
In most Latin American countries, definitely including Honduras, inadequate nutrition is
so prevalent that most hospitals have special wings to care for malnourished and starving
children (Lusk 1989). There are other conditions, which undermine the life chances of
these children. Police have arrested about half the children of the street (but almost none
of the market children); four in ten have been in jail (15% of them many times). One in
five of the abandoned street kids belong to a street gang. More than half sniff glue (half
regularly); four in ten also drink alcohol at least occasionally; six in ten smoke cigarettes;
one in five smokes marijuana. (In contrast, substance abuse is nearly absent among the
market children.)
Thus, inhalants are the most commonly abused substance among abandoned street
children in Honduras, as opposed to alcohol (and then crack) among homeless teens in
the United States, but the overall rate of substance abuse is about the same in both
contexts. As in the United States, street children in Honduras sniff glue because it is very
cheap; the pharmacological effects are quite similar to those of alcohol. Sniffing glue,
like getting drunk, diminishes pain, reduces fear, increases bravado, and suppresses
hunger.
Further compounding the health and emotional difficulties of the abandoned street
children is that many of them (44%) are sexually active (compared to only 5% of the
market children). Almost all of the sexually active children of the street (85 percent; N =
47) have been treated for sexually transmitted diseases at least once (compared to only
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