Rosane Mendonça

The public-private wage gap in Brazil

Recent changes in public employment in Brazil generate costs to workers that leave this sector. In this study we investigate the wage loss that leaving public employees may experience if they were absorbed by the private sector. Using microdata from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios of 1995, we calculate the gross and controlled wage gaps between the two sectors. The results show that both wage gaps are relatively high, although significantly lower for the second measure. The latter indicates the presence of important differences in the composition of the labor force between the two sectors. In fact, public employees tend to be on average better educated, older and have longer tenure than the workers in the private sector. Also, the study shows that there is a significant heterogeneity within the public sector: the wage gap is higher for federal public employees, decreasing for the state and municipal levels. As mudancas que vem ocorrendo no emprego publico no Brasil acarretam diversos custos para os trabalhadores que saem desse setor. Neste trabalho investigamos a magnitude da perda salarial que os trabalhadores realocados do setor publico para o privado podem experimentar. Utilizando os microdados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios (PNAD) de 1995, calculamos os hiatos salariais bruto e controlado entre esses setores. Os resultados obtidos mostram que esses hiatos salariais sao relativamente altos, embora significativamente menores quando utilizamos a segunda medida. Essa ultima constatacao indica a existencia de diferencas na composicao da forca de trabalho entre os dois setores. De fato, os trabalhadores empregados no setor publico tendem a ser em media mais escolarizados, mais velhos e possuir maior tempo de experiencia no trabalho do que os trabalhadores empregados no setor privado. Outra constatacao importante e a presenca de uma significativa heterogeneidade dentro do setor publico: o hiato salarial e maior para os empregados na esfera federal, decrescendo para os niveis estadual e municipal.

A Short-Term Cost- Effectiveness Evaluation of Better-Quality Daycare Centers

Studies of the effects of pre-school programs on child development in developing countries have found scant impact. This study was conducted to reconcile the importance of daycare for child development with the empirical estimates of small effects. Using a random sample of 500 children from 100 daycare centers in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), the study combines a flexible function relating child development to daycare center quality. A hedonic cost function permits an evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of better-quality daycare centers. The study finds that the developmental age of children attending high-quality services is greater than that of children attending low-quality centers. It also finds that quality improvement can be measured in a number of ways, with different cost implications or impacts on child development.

A Absorção de Mão-de-Obra no Setor de Serviços

The article investigates the role the service sector played in job creation in Brazil during the 1977-90. Special attention is focused on what are known as personal services (community services, repairs, food and lodging, cleaning, and household services), which are considered the least attractive in terms of job quality. Firstly, results show that the proportion of the work force employed within the service sector was similar to that employed by the manufacturing and civil construction sectors together. Secondly, the number of jobs in personal services grew in both absolute and relative terms, surpassing rates for the other two sectors, while in relation to other service sectors, personal services displayed lower rates in both absolute and relative terms. Lastly, the personal services sector enjoyed systematic expansion within the urban labor market, while its participation within the service sector overall declined slightly

Determinants of the Educational Performance in Brazil

Despite the high estimated returns to schooling, the Brazilian educational indicators have been below international standards over the years. Worse, the poorer the family the lower human capital investment is. Since the individual probability of being poor is strongly determined by the educational level, there exists a process of intergenerational transmission of poverty. The main goal of this article is to investigate the determinants of the weak educational performance in Brazil. The analysis focus on 11-to-25-year-old individuals, living in urban areas of the Northeast and Southeast regions. Four individual educational level determinants are investigated: the availability and quality of the educational services, the attractiveness of the labor market, the availability of family resources (financial and non-financial), and the amount of resources in the community where the individual lives. Similar to previous works, family attributes appear to be the most important. Furthermore, the results suggest that attractive labor markets are related to lower levels of schooling.