Paperboy
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- For some other uses of the word "paperboy", please see Paperboy (disambiguation).
A paperboy is the general name for a person (traditionally a preteen boy) employed by a newspaper to deliver papers to subscribers as assigned by streets and routes, often on a bicycle.
The position of paperboy occupies a prominent place in the American folklore because it has long been the first paying job available to youngsters. Despite this, the number of paperboys in the United States has declined greatly in the 1990s.
This decline is due partly to the disappearance of afternoon newspapers, whose delivery times worked better for school-aged children than did those of morning papers, which usually must be delivered before 6 a.m. The numbers have also been affected by changing demographics, labor laws and concern about unescorted children, all of which have led many newspapers to switch to delivery by adults.