IRIBA Working Paper 12: A more level playing field? Explaining the decline in earnings inequality in Brazil, 1995-2012

From:
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Published
1 January 2014
Country:
Brazil
Document Type:
Working Paper
Theme:
Economic Growth
First published:
1 January 2014
Authors:
Ferreira, F.H.G., Firpo, S.P. and Messina, J.

Abstract

The Gini coefficient of labour earnings in Brazil fell by 20% between 1995 and 2012, from 0.5 to 0.4. The decline was even larger by other measures, with the 90-10 percentile ratio falling by almost 40%. Although the conventional explanation of falling returns to education did play a role, a RIF regression-based decomposition analysis suggests that substantial reductions in the gender, race and spatial wage gaps, conditional on human capital and institutional variables, explain the lion바카라 사이트™s share of the decline in earnings inequality. Lower male, white, urban and Southeast wage premia, alongside lower formal-informal wage gaps, account for 6.3 of the ten Gini points difference between 1995 and 2012. Although rising minimum wages contributed to the decline during 2004-2012, they had no such effect during 1995-2002.

Citation

Ferreira, F.H.G.; Firpo, S.P.; Messina, J. IRIBA Working Paper 12: A more level playing field? Explaining the decline in earnings inequality in Brazil, 1995-2012. International Research Initiative on Brazil and Africa (IRIBA), University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (2014) 30 pp.

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Published 1 January 2014
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