Street Vendors
Around the world, a large and perhaps growing share of the informal workforce operates on city streets, on sidewalks, and in other public spaces, selling everything from fresh produce to electronic equipment. Broadly defined, street vendors include all those selling goods or services in public spaces. While not all street vendors work without licences or legal protection, the majority do.
Most street vending businesses are one-person operations that use unpaid family labor on an as-needed basis. Some sell from the comfort of covered stalls; others simply squat on the ground beside a basket or blanket displaying their merchandise. In the developing world, millions of poor people who cannot afford to buy from retail stores depend on the
affordable goods that street vendors provide.
Statistics On Street Vendors
It is difficult to estimate the number of people employed as street vendors, due to their high mobility and the marked seasonal variation in their work. In one study of ten developing countries, employment in street vending as a share of total nonagricultural employment was found to range from two to nine percent.
Brazil and Mexico were estimated to each have over one million street vendors, and India, more than three million.2 Recent research that goes beyond official labour force statistics suggests that India has closer
to ten million street vendors.3 In another study of nine African and Asian countries, street vending accounted for 73 to 99 percent of total employment in trade, and for 50 to 90 percent of total GDP from trade.4
Women In Street Vending
Street vending is one of the largest categories of informal work employing women. The low costs of entry and flexible hours make street vending an attractive option for poor women; for many, it is the only option they have.
Women account for the majority of street vendors in many countries, especially in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. In Benin, for example, 92 percent of informal traders are women.5
Although men form the majority of street vendors in North African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries where social norms restrict women’s mobility outside the home,6 these male vendors often sell goods prepared by women at home, especially in the food trade.7
Compared to men, female street vendors are more likely to operate in insecure or illegal spaces, trade in less lucrative goods, generate a lower volume of trade, and work as commission agents or employees of other vendors. As a result, they tend to earn less than male vendors.8
Research on street vendors in Lima, Peru
In her research on street vendors in Lima, Peru, Sally Roever found that street vendors with fixed posts are not inherently formal or informal; rather, they are engaged in a constant political struggle with the authorities to define the terms of their formality.
She also found that street vendors in general fall awkwardly in the country's legal framework. As a result, the extent and nature of street vending regulations are mostly a product of local, day-to-day political struggle, rather than any sort of long-term planning: hence the title of her dissertation, "Negotiating Formality".
View Sally Roever's dissertation, Negotiating Formality, which elaborates on the historical and political conditions that produced the current status of street vendors in Lima.
Access the Oxford University Press volume Linking the Formal and Informal Economy: Concepts and Policies (Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, Ravi Kanbur, and Elinor Ostrom, eds., 2006), which contains a chapter summarizing Roever's argument concerning policy incoherence in Lima.