Atitudes, expectativas e discriminação no mercado de trabalho brasileiro

Abstract

This dissertation presents two papers referring to discrimination and prejudice in the Brazilian work market using different data bank. The first part of this research approaches different aspects of the probability of dismissing someone for being an HIV positive worker. The second part studies the possible divergences of income expectation among men and women. As to discrimination, although it is not economists‟ attribution to provide with theories about the issue, discrimination economy has presented hypotheses which define the possible motivations which lead someone to have discriminatory attitude towards a certain group of people. Considering that discrimination in the work market manifests in diverse ways and towards different groups, the first article of the thesis studies the specificities of discrimination in Brazil in relation to HIV positive workers using attitudinal data gathered from Health Ministry and through the estimation of an ordered logit model (and its variations). An analysis of probabilities of individuals to present discriminatory attitude towards HIV positive workers was carried out, controlled by health and socioeconomic variables. Results revealed that variables such as higher levels of education and of school results, higher levels of awareness of the condition, personally knowing the infected person, living in the southeast region of Brazil, contribute to make the individual present a lower probability of agreeing with dismissing an HIV positive worker. The second article aims at assessing indirect discrimination, as what concerns the expectations of discrimination in the work market. The study was carried out based on men and women salary expectations in the Brazilian State of Ceará, drawing upon data collected in the 2007-entrance-exam of Federal University of Ceará. Large literature posits that the effective salary is a function of mainly two variables, i.e., investment in human capital and signal issued by individuals‟ productivity. However, studies have increasingly argued that salary differences can be resultant of differences in the agents‟ expectations (GARCIA and PEÑALOSA, 2003; FILIPPIN, 2003; FILIPPIN and ICHINO, 2005, among others). To assess income expectation, data were collect among the 2007-entrance-exam applicants for selected courses at Federal University of Ceará. A module of income projection for two years after conclusion of an undergraduate course was collected and, using the sequences of answers, we have concluded that there are gender differences in income expectations both for those professions that have a balanced distribution of men and women and for those that are typically male dominated. The study revealed that in both cases women expect to earn lower salaries than men. Within Psychology applicants, it was observed that women have higher income expectations than men. These results point to evidences of important analytical distinctions between men and women as to their aspirations in the work market.