Medidas de capital humano e seus efeitos sobre os diferenciasis de produtividade: uma comparação entre os estados do Ceará e Santa Catarina

Abstract

This article analyzes the individuals’ earnings differential, theoretically supported by mincerian equations, by contrasting more and less developed states, Santa Catarina (high HDI) and Ceará (low HDI) respectively. A distinct measure of human capital is employed, which is considered as the main driver of productivity increase, consequently, of the regional growth. Such a measure is defined by an index composed by education and health components, contrary, however, to the usual measures that just use education, which are theoretically unacceptable for developing countries. The empirical analysis was based upon econometric models with estimation done through instrumental variables, supported by microdata from the National Household Sampling Survey (PNAD/IBGE) for the year of 1998, following the procedures proposed by Heckman (2005) and Cameron and Trivedi (2005). Out of the results, it was proved that there is larger robustness of this new measure of human capital in consonance with the theoretical expectation of their effects be larger in the magnitude of the positive differential in favor of workers from more developed regions, than it would be if the health component was not considered. The results for the individuals’ attributes variables followed the stream of most works in the literature when they appear that race, denoted by non-whites, and gender, for women, tend to have negative effects on the average earnings.