Abstract
ABSTRACT Throughout the 2000s Brazil went through a great phase of economic development. The present study seeks to investigate whether this movement was accompanied by a reduction in inequality in the labor market, measured here by the wage gap between whites and non-whites. To do so, three cohorts of time (2002-2004, 2007-2009 and 2012-2014) were analyzed using the microdata of the National Household Sampling Survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Amostragem Domiciliar - Pnad). The applied method is the counterfactual Oaxaca-Blinder along with the Recentered Influence Function Regression (RIF-Regression) so that the main determinants of wage inequalities can be detailed throughout the salary distribution. Our results showed that wage gap (totals, due to observed factors and discrimination) are higher in the higher quantiles of the distribution, that is, in professions or activities with higher wages. The results also point that the wage gap between the groups decreased during the analyzed period, which was mainly due to observable characteristics, especially educational levels. However, discrimination decreased only between the first and second triennium and in low magnitude. Apart from that, the main determinants of racial wage gap are returns related to education, experience and professions considered unregulated (self-employment and informal workers).
Highlights
Brazil has recently undergone transformations in the labor market and in the socioeconomic field of a magnitude not observed in previous periods. Komatsu and Menezes Filho (2015), using data from the Monthly Employment Survey (PME), point out that from 2002 to 2014 a real growth of 17% was observed in relation to the average wage, largely as a result of the real minimum wage increases that, during these 12 years, amounted to 70%
The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method is applied in combination with the Recentered Influence Function Regression (RIF-Regression) method proposed by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009), which can be used in the case of unconditional quantile distributions for the outcome variable
Other productive characteristics - specific experience and experience - provide positive wage returns which are favorable to whites, the coefficient related to specific experience presents a discrepancy well above the coefficient related to experience, when comparing the races
Summary
Brazil has recently undergone transformations in the labor market and in the socioeconomic field of a magnitude not observed in previous periods. Komatsu and Menezes Filho (2015), using data from the Monthly Employment Survey (PME), point out that from 2002 to 2014 a real growth of 17% was observed in relation to the average wage, largely as a result of the real minimum wage increases that, during these 12 years, amounted to 70%. Data from the World Bank (2002-2014) show that such changes occurred together with the evolution of some social indicators, such as: a 59% increase in GDP per capita; the reduction of the population in the poverty line from 22.2% to 7.4%; and the decrease in the Gini index by 14%, reaching the level of 51.48 in 2014 In this context, the wage difference between races should be noted, since this factor is a reflection of both social inequities and inequities in the labor market. According to Lang, Lehmann and Yeon (2012), these wage differences can have a direct impact on the socioeconomic development of a country by producing inefficiencies in the labor market through the transfer of resources between the groups In this sense, Leite (2005) points out that wage discrimination associated with race is the main source of inequities in the Brazilian labor market
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