FAMÍLIAS TRABALHADORAS E FAMÍLIAS SEM TRABALHO: EVIDÊNCIAS DE POLARIZAÇÃO PARA O BRASIL

This article analyzes the work polarization in Brazil. We can define polarization as the difference between the observed ratio of workless households and the ratio that would prevailed if the work was randomly assigned to people. For example, imagine a simplified world with only two households with two members each, and that there is two people working in the economy. The well-being is very different if just one member of each family is working, or if the two workers belong to the same family. Gregg and Wadsworth (2002) propose some polarization measures, which we calculate for Brazil, using the data from Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) for 1981 and 2003. The results show that polarization is negative in Brazil. In other words there is fewer workless households than would occur from a random distribution of work among adults. On the other hand, the polarization has increased in the period, as result of the increase in the fraction of two adult workless households. Moreover, the workless households are poorer, have more child labor and are more dependent of governmental policies than the others.