Race discrimination or inequality of opportunities: the Brazilian case

Following the topics discussed by Campante et al (2004), this paper contributes to the literature of the Brazilian racial discrimination by isolating the effect of intergeneration transmission of schooling and the school's quality in the race discrimination effect. Instead of modelling just one mincer-type equation like others papers, it was decided to use the Two Stage Least Square Model where the first step of modelling control the endogeneity of individual schooling instrumenting it by family background and ability tests while attending school. The paper also provide a comparative profile of urban racial discrimination in the Northeast and the Southeast recognizing the important differences across regions in Brazil both in terms of economic development and racial composition of the population. As found by Campante et al (2004), results reveal that part of the component of wage differentials ordinarily attributed to labor market discrimination is actually explained by persistent educational inequalities between races. However because they didn't control the potential bias due to the endogeneity of some variables, their discrimination effect is 15 to 19 percentage points higher than it should be. The mechanism of intergeneration transmission is correlated with financial constraints and higher education of parents because blacks have lower elasticities of education with respect to parent's education due to selection and causation. Even controlling the model using instruments, Private sector remains as the sector where race discrimination is really an issue. Moreover, the regional profile suggests that the labor market is a more important locus of the racial issue in the Southeast than in the Northeast, although the significant presence in both regions. However, we are not controlling for selection bias and consequently the results must be viewed with caution because it is not sure how precise the estimations are

The Effects of Expanding Education on the Distribution of Income in Cear.

education, poverty, inequality

Ex-ante Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: The Case of Bolsa Escola

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on micro-econometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil’s recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, we find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39901/3/wp516.pd

Beyond Oaxaca-Blinder: Accounting for Differences in Household Income Distributions Across Countries

This paper develops a micro-econometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, we also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for the conditional distributions of education, fertility and non-labor incomes. We import combinations of estimated parameters from these models to simulate counterfactual income distributions. This allows us to decompose differences between functionals of two income distributions (such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares due to differences in the structure of labor market returns (price effects); differences in the occupational structure; and differences in the underlying distribution of assets (endowment effects). We apply the method to the differences between the Brazilian income distribution and those of the United States and Mexico, and find that most of Brazil's excess income inequality is due to underlying inequalities in the distribution of two key endowments: access to education and to sources of non-labor income, mainly pensions.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39863/3/wp478.pd

Educational expansion and income distribution. A Micro-Simulation for Ceará

Does more education really mean less poverty and less inequality? How much less? What are the transmission mechanisms? This paper presents the results of a micro-simulation exercise for the Brazilian State of Ceará, which suggests that broad-based policies aimed at increasing educational attainment would have substantial impacts on poverty reduction, but muted effects on inequality. These results are highly dependent on assumptions about the behaviour of returns to education, both for the distribution of earnings and for the distribution of household income per capita. A large share of the poverty reducing effect of more education operates through greater incentives for labour force participation among the poor, and through reductions in fertility. Both of these effects function largely through decisions made by poor women.education, poverty, inequality

Ex-ante evaluation of conditional cash transfer programs: the case of bolsa escola

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil's recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, the authors find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levelsEnvironmental Economics&Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Public Health Promotion,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Youth and Governance,Street Children,Environmental Economics&Policies,Poverty Assessment,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis

Beyond Oaxaca-Blinder: Accounting for Differences in Household Income Distributions Across Countries

This paper develops a micro-econometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, we also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for the conditional distributions of education, fertility and non-labor incomes. We import combinations of estimated parameters from these models to simulate counterfactual income distributions. This allows us to decompose differences between functionals of two income distributions (such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares due to differences in the structure of labor market returns (price effects); differences in the occupational structure; and differences in the underlying distribution of assets (endowment effects). We apply the method to the differences between the Brazilian income distribution and those of the United States and Mexico, and find that most of Brazil's excess income inequality is due to underlying inequalities in the distribution of two key endowments: access to education and to sources of non-labor income, mainly pensions.Inequality, Distribution, Micro-simulations

Conditional cash transfers, schoolingand child labor: micro-simulating bolsa escola

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil’s recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, we find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels.Conditional Transfers; Demand for Schooling, Child Labor JEL Codes: I38, J13, J22, J24

Ex-ante Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: The Case of Bolsa Escola

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on micro-econometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil’s recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, we find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels.Conditional Transfers, Demand for Schooling, Child Labor

The Post-Apartheid Evolution of Earnings Inequality in South Africa, 1995-2004

This paper examines the trend in post-Apartheid earnings inequality in South Africa. By combining data sets, the paper is able to analyze the trend for the whole period 1995-2004. Earnings inequality rose sharply during 1995-1999 and then declined marginally, but remained high, during 2000-2004. A dramatic rise in unemployment was the driving force in exacerbating earnings inequality in the 1990s. Unemployment began to level off in the 2000s but remained at a high rate. An unprecedented influx of new entrants into the formal labour market in the 1990s put downward pressure on average real wages, affecting workers both in the middle of the distribution and toward the bottom. The growth of the South African economy has been neither rapid enough nor employment-intensive enough to absorb such a large influx of workers. Moreover, the economy?s greater openness to trade and financial flows appears to have left many workers behind, especially Africans, workers in low-skilled occupations, residents of rural areas in general and poor regions in particular. Earnings inequality remains high across groupings of workers differentiated by race, education and occupation although occupation has become a more important factor than the other two in the 2000s. Differentials across the mean earnings of workers classified by rural and urban residence and by province have also intensified. In the 1990s, inequalities within groupings of worker rose sharply and then moderated by the 2000s. While earnings differentials by race and the rural-urban divide also exacerbated inequality in the 1990s, they have been in modest decline since then. These changes in the dynamics of earnings inequality between the 1990s and 2000s pose new challenges for South African policymakers in their efforts to substantially reduce the Apartheid legacy of high inequality and poverty.South Africa, Income distribution, Earnings distribution, Inequality