Children in the developing world work because of the desperate poverty their families face, itself a result of national and global inequitable distributions of wealth. Unfortunately, the focus on the structural causes of child labor has obscured investigation of the work these children perform, the income earned from their labors, and their reasons for undertaking specific types of labor. Based upon research conducted among children working on the streets of Guatemala City, I have found that urban street labor offers children the opportunity to earn an income well above the legal minimum wage; in fact, most do better than their peers and many adults working in agriculture and industry. While the children themselves clearly recognize the disadvantages of urban street labor, such as danger, filth, instability and the shame associated with street-based occupations, most children prefer this type of labor to others they have performed. In the course of their work, child street laborers become acquainted with adults laboring in both the formal and informal urban economies. These adults provide them with knowledge, connections and capital that allow them to move on to eventual ownership of their own more lucrative businesses. In addition, many urban child street laborers view their current jobs as a means of obtaining the vocational skills and connections that will allow them to migrate to and survive in the cities of Mexico and the United States