Occupational Segregation by Race and Sex in Brazil, 1989–2001

Abstract

Race and sex differentials in labor market outcomes in Brazil appear substantial, phenomena often tied to occupational segregation. This paper presents an array of Duncan indices of dissimilarity to investigate the magnitude and contours of occupational differentiation in Brazil, as well as changes in the recent past, constructed from Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios (PNAD) microdata for 1989 and 2001. Findings include the facts that measurable occupational differentation by sex is over twice as high as that by race and that differentiation on both counts is highest among people 35 and older and outside the Northeastern region. Occupational differentiation by race appears comparable among women and men, but may be higher among women if accurately measured. Racial differentiation grows with education, while sexual segregation declines. Differentiation has declined modestly since 1989 in almost all categories except by race among younger people, men and the most educated.

Income Inequality and the Persistence of Racial Economic Disparities

“…This means that some of the racial income gap is due to differences in who gets which jobs. There is evidence that occupational segregation is decreasing and that blacks are entering high-status occupations at greater rates than in the past (Farley 1998;King 1992). Even within jobs, however, blacks tend to earn less than observationally similar whites.…”

Earnings Over the Life Cycle: The Mincer Earnings Function and Its Applications

“…24 In an index based on 29 occupational categories Albelda (1986) shows that occupational segregation decreased from 60.3 in 1958 to 53.0 in 1981. Using 159 occupations, King (1992) reported the magnitude of Duncan's index based on Census data for 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, and 1980 decreased from 0.8 to 0.6. A more recent study (Ruel, 2004) finds similar results using a multiplicative model developed by Charles and Grusky (1998).…”

The joint effect of ethnicity and gender on occupational segregation. An approach based on the Mutual Information Index

“…2005;Blackwell 2003;Jacobs 1989;King 1995King , 2009Mintz and Krymkowski 2011;Reskin and Padavic 1999;Tomaskovic-Devey 1993;Wright and Ellis 2000). These studies measure the e ects of one source of segregation on people's distribution across occupations, and only afterwards do they gauge the e ects of the other dimension.…”

“…These studies measure the e ects of one source of segregation on people's distribution across occupations, and only afterwards do they gauge the e ects of the other dimension. If they use dichotomous indices such as the DI or the Gini index, analysts restrict the ethnic contrasts to pairwise comparisons between (i) Whites and the most prominent minority group, which is usually Black people in the US (Cohn 1999;King 1995King , 2009Tomaskovic-Devey 1993);…”