Brazilian Poverty Between And Within Groups: Decomposition By Geographical, Group-Specific Poverty Lines

This study investigates Brazilian poverty by exploiting geographical differences in the cost of living and questions whether the standard approach in measuring poverty is informative enough when the population is heterogeneous. To do so, we apply the reformulation of the FGT class of poverty measures proposed by Chiappero and Civardi (2006). This decomposition aims to compute poverty within groups, using group-specific poverty lines, and poverty between groups by adopting a community-wide poverty line. The North and the Central-West reveal a dominance of the within component. The North-East shows the highest level of poverty, even higher than the North and the Central-West, but the high within group component is counterbalanced by a higher between group component, attributable to the high level of inequality of the North-East. The South and the South-East have between group components that dominate over within group ones. Our findings suggest that the analysis of poverty between and within groups is more exhaustive than the standard methodology when differentiated poverty lines are exploited.Poverty between and within groups, Geographical disparities, Brazil

Brazilian Poverty Between and Within Groups: Decomposing by Geographical Group-Specific Poverty Lines

This paper presents empirical findings by applying the reformulation of the FGT class of poverty measures provided by Bottiroli-Civardi and Chiappero-Martinetti (2004) to the Brazilian annual households survey, the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra do Domicilios (PNAD) for 2002. Starting from a set of geographically-specific poverty lines, we compute poverty between and within these differentiated homogenous groups running two different exercises. First, we consider the whole Brazil and we find the between component is dominant due to the high heterogeneity of this set of poverty lines. Then, by considering separately each region, we find a dominance of the within component in the North and in the Central-West, while the between component is dominant in the remaining regions. These findings renew the importance of having a critical eye in interpreting synthetic indexes of poverty.

An analysis of pay and occupational differences by gender and race in Brazil - 1987 to 2006

This thesis investigates the magnitude and evolution of gender and racial occupational segregation and wage gaps in Brazil from 1987 to 2006. First, we provide the construction of a new harmonized and temporally consistent re-classification of the occupational codes using the Brazilian household survey, the PNADs. This new occupational classification permits an examination of the evolution of the Brazilian occupational structure over a protracted period of time. Second, we examine the occupational structure in Brazil assessing both the extent and trends in gender and racial based occupational segregation. We use several wellknown indices of segregation (Duncan and Duncan, 1955; Moir and Selby-Smith, 1979; Karmel and Maclachlan, 1988; Silber, 1989) and focus on the evolution over time of the occupational segregation across formal and non-formal labour markets. An attempt is made to assess the main forces driving changes in occupational segregation over time by employing a decomposition of the segregation measures developed by Deutsch, Flueckiger and Silber (2009). Third, we investigate the magnitude and evolution of gender and racial pay gaps in Brazil by employing several decomposition techniques. Together with the standard Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we apply the Brown, Moon and Zoloth (1980) decomposition technique, which allows us to account for the impact of occupational segregation on the wage gap. We explore the impact of the selection process on our decomposition results by employing different parametric corrections (the Heckman (1979) and Lee (1983) corrections). Several sensitivity checks are also implemented and alternative correction methods investigated such as the non-parametric imputation method by Olivetti and Petrongolo (2008) and the local wage gap estimation by Machado (2011). Fourth, we attempt to provide a comprehensive portrait of gender and racial wage gaps across the entire wage distribution while exploring the impact of gender and racial occupational segregation on wage determination in the Brazilian labour market. Our analysis particularly focuses on the evolution of the impact of female and non-white occupational intensity on wage outcomes and disparities. We employ quantile regression analysis in order to investigate the role of female and non-white occupational intensity at different points along the conditional wage distribution. We then apply two different decomposition techniques, proposed by Machado and Mata (2005) and Melly (2006), and by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009), to investigate the determinants of wage disparities at these different points in the wage distribution and to understand how these determinants vary across the wage distribution. Finally, we offer some concluding remarks, discuss the limitation of the research and provide an agenda for future research on the themes investigated in this thesis

The Evolution of Gender and Racial Occupational Segregation across Formal and non-Formal Labour Markets in Brazil – 1987 to 2006

This paper provides a unique analysis of the evolution of gender and racial occupational segregation in Brazil from 1987-2006. Drawing on a novel dataset, constructed by harmonizing national household data over twenty years, the paper provides extensive new insights in the nature and evolution of occupational segregation over time, while also providing important new insights into the forces driving these changes. The results presented here expand upon existing research in the developing world in several directions. First, the new dataset constructed for this study allows the analysis to cover a longer time period than has previously been possible. Second, the analysis explores both gender and racial segregation side by side. Third, all of the analysis is conducted for the labour market as a whole, and disaggregated into the formal, informal and self-employed labour markets. Fourth, the paper decomposes the key driving forces that lie behind trends in occupational segregation. The paper presents three major findings: first, gender segregation is always considerably greater than racial occupational segregation, but racial segregation has been more persistent over time and has several features that make it comparatively worrisome; second, while occupational segregation is declining by both gender and race, the decline has been greater in the formal labour market. Third, the decomposition of segregation measures over time reveals that changes in the internal gender and racial composition of occupations have driven improvements over time. These important differences between formal and non-formal labour markets provide preliminary insights into the possible importance of formal labour market policies and institutions in shaping outcomes.Brazil, Gender, Race, Occupational Segregation, Informality.

Education and conflict recovery : the case of Timor Leste

The Timor Leste secession conflict lasted for 25 years. Its last wave of violence in 1999, following the withdrawal of Indonesian troops, generated massive displacement and destruction with widespread consequences for the economic and social development of the country. This paper analyzes the impact of the conflict on the level and access to education of boys and girls in Timor Leste. The authors examine the short-term impact of the 1999 violence on school attendance and grade deficit rates in 2001, and the longer-term impact of the conflict on primary school completion of cohorts of children observed in 2007. They compare the educational impact of the 1999 wave of violence with the impact of other periods of high-intensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, the analysis finds a strong negative impact of the conflict on primary school completion among boys of school age exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The effect is stronger for boys attending the last three grades of primary school. This result shows a substantial loss of human capital among young males in Timor Leste since the early 1970s, resulting from household investment trade-offs between education and economic survival.Adolescent Health,Youth and Governance,Education For All,Primary Education,Post Conflict Reconstruction

Brazilian Poverty Between and Within Groups: Decomposing by Geographical Group-Specific Poverty Lines

This paper presents empirical findings by applying the reformulation of the FGT class of poverty measures provided by Bottiroli-Civardi and Chiappero-Martinetti (2004) to the Brazilian annual households survey, the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra do Domicilios (PNAD) for 2002. Starting from a set of geographically-specific poverty lines, we compute poverty between and within these differentiated homogenous groups running two different exercises. First, we consider the whole Brazil and we find the between component is dominant due to the high heterogeneity of this set of poverty lines. Then, by considering separately each region, we find a dominance of the within component in the North and in the Central-West, while the between component is dominant in the remaining regions. These findings renew the importance of having a critical eye in interpreting synthetic indexes of poverty

Essays on Poverty, Inequality and Well-Being in Brazil

La seguente tesi raccoglie tre saggi su povertà, disuguaglianza e benessere in brasile. il primo capitolo si concentra sull'esplorazione delle principali determinanti della disuguaglianza brasiliana. tale capitolo prima traccia un'analisi della povertà e della disuguaglianza brasiliana. successivamente si concentra sull'analisi delle principali determinanti della disuguaglianza, in particolare le differenze etniche e geografiche, applicando alcune tecniche di scomposizione del reddito. il secondo capitolo studia la povertà brasiliana focalizzandosi sulle disparità geografiche per testare se l'approccio standard di studio della povertà è sufficientemente informativo quando si analizzano popolazioni chiaramente non omogenee. i primi due capitoli applicano metodologie di misurazione e scomposizione della povertà e della disuguaglianza nell'ambito dell'approccio standard monetario . lo scopo dell'ultimo capitolo è invece proprio quello di allargare la prospettiva della nostra analisi abbracciando l'approccio delle capacità. INFATTI, il terzo capitolo si focalizza sulla costruzione del modello e sulla stima econometrica della cosiddetta functioning production function che è una relazione in grado di spiegare in che misura gli individui sono in grado di convertire le loro risorse private e pubbliche nel raggiungimento del funzionamento specifico essere in buona salute .This thesis is a collection of three essays on poverty, inequality and well-being for Brazil. The first chapter aims at understanding the key determinants of the Brazilian inequality. this chapter firstly sketches a poverty and inequality analysis for Brazil and then investigates the main determinants of inequality, particularly racial and geographical differences, by applying several decomposition techniques. the second chapter investigates Brazilian poverty by exploiting geographical differences and questions whether the standard approach in measuring poverty is informative enough taking into consideration that the population is clearly heterogeneous. The first two chapters of this work apply techniques able to measure and decompose both poverty and inequality within the context of the standard monetary approach. The purpose of the last chapter is to enlarge the perspective of our analysis by adopting the capability approach. hence the third chapter aims to model and estimate the health functioning production function as a relation that conveys to what extent people are able to convert private and public resources into the achievement of the specific functioning being healthy

Taxation, Non-Tax Revenue and Democracy: New Evidence Using New Cross-Country Data

taxation, non-tax revenue, accountability, resource curse.A large body of cross-country econometric research has investigated the possibility of a political resource curse, by which access to extensive natural resources reduces the extent of democracy and accountability. However, this literature has been plagued by problematic data and correspondingly inappropriate model specification. Dominant theories of the political resource curse focus on the political consequences of differences in the composition of government revenue, with greater reliance on non-tax revenue undermining democracy. However, most studies do not actually test this relationship: owing to the poor quality of government revenue data, they have focused instead on the impact of total resource income on democracy – a reasonable, but imperfect, approximation of the actual theory. Meanwhile, the robustness of those few studies that have focused on government revenue specifically is undermined by poor data quality. We overcome this problem by drawing on the newlycreated ICTD Government Revenue Dataset, which dramatically improves the quality of existing data and allows us to test directly the connection between the composition of government revenue and democracy. Employing this new data we re-test the most compelling econometric approaches from the existing literature, finding support for the existence of a political resource curse.DfID, NORA

Education and conflict recovery : the case of Timor Leste

The Timor Leste secession conflict lasted for 25 years. Its last wave of violence in 1999, following the withdrawal of Indonesian troops, generated massive displacement and destruction with widespread consequences for the economic and social development of the country. This paper analyses the impact of the conflict on the level and access to education of boys and girls in Timor Leste. We examine the short-term impact of the 1999 violence on school attendance and grade deficit rates in 2001, and the longer-term impact of the conflict on primary school completion of cohorts of children observed in 2007. We compare also the educational impact of the 1999 wave of violence with the impact of other periods of highintensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, we find a strong negative impact of the conflict on primary school completion among boys of school age exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The effect is stronger for boys attending the last three grades of primary school. This result shows a substantial loss of human capital among young males in Timor Leste since the early 1970s, resulting from household investment trade-offs between education and economic survival. Keywords: conflict; education; children; gender

Does War Empower Women? Evidence from Timor Leste

Conflicts may change the material conditions and the incentives individuals face through death, displacement and other consequences of violence. Being a victim of a war can also profoundly change individual beliefs, values and preferences (Bellows and Miguel 2009). Several counts have linked violent conflicts – including the two world wars – to changes in the roles of women, as well as social norms and beliefs towards gender roles within societies. The aim of this paper is to investigate the medium- and long-term consequences of a long-lasting conflict – the Timor Leste conflict – on various dimensions of women’s empowerment.UK Department for International Developmen