nÃo hà / The objective of this study is to estimate and analyze the income elasticity of poverty and inequality in the Brazilian Northeast. For this, we used the Headcount (Po), the proportion of indigents, the Gini Index and Average per capita Income for the period 1981 to 2009. Regarding the methodology used to measure the elasticity, we chose to econometric techniques for panel data, given that information was used for the nine Northeast states in that period. The results showed that policies to reduce income inequality in the Northeast impacts on poverty reduction, in addition, the reduction of inequality has more impact in the fall in poverty levels than just the growth in average income. / O objetivo deste estudo à estimar e analisar as elasticidades renda e desigualdade da renda da pobreza no Nordeste brasileiro. Para isso, foram utilizados a ProporÃÃo de Pobres (Po), a ProporÃÃo de Indigentes, o Ãndice de Gini e a Renda mÃdia per capita, para o perÃodo de 1981 a 2009. No tocante à metodologia empregada para aferir as elasticidades, optou-se por tÃcnicas economÃtricas para dados em painel, haja vista que foram utilizadas informaÃÃes para os nove estados da RegiÃo Nordeste no referido perÃodo. Os resultados mostraram que as polÃticas destinadas a reduzir a desigualdade de renda na RegiÃo Nordeste impactam na reduÃÃo da pobreza. AlÃm disso, a reduÃÃo desta desigualdade tem mais impacto na queda dos nÃveis de pobreza do que simplesmente o crescimento da renda mÃdia.

Introdução - A qualidade da dieta é alvo de influência das desigualdades socioeconômicas. Entretanto, há ausência de evidências quanto ao nível de desigualdade na qualidade da dieta e, embora existam esforços abrangentes para promover dietas mais saudáveis, questões relacionadas à dimensão da equidade em saúde são negligenciadas. Assim, é essencial compreender essas questões para desenvolvimento e implementação apropriada de intervenções específicas em saúde pública. Objetivo - Avaliar a qualidade da dieta da população do município de São Paulo nos anos de 2003, 2008 e 2015 e sua associação com DSS. Métodos - Foram utilizados dados do estudo transversal de base populacional ISA-Nutrição de 2003, 2008 e 2015, com amostra probabilística de adolescentes, adultos e idosos residentes no município de São Paulo. Os dados socioeconômicos e de estilo de vida foram coletados por meio de questionário semiestruturado e o consumo alimentar, por recordatórios alimentares de 24 horas. A qualidade da dieta foi avaliada com base no Índice de Qualidade da Dieta Revisado (IQD-R). Variáveis descritivas foram comparadas utilizando intervalo de confiança de 95%. Diferenças entre as médias dos escores total e dos componentes do IQD-R foram comparados em cada faixa etária, ano de estudo e DSS estruturais. A associação das desigualdades e DSS com a qualidade da dieta baseou-se em modelos de regressão linear múltipla e na estimativa do índice de concentração (IC), que permite identificar a desigualdade relacionada à renda na qualidade da dieta entre indivíduos com diferentes níveis socioeconômicos. Resultados - Observou-se melhora gradual da qualidade da dieta no período de 12 anos, sendo que os idosos foram o grupo etário com melhor pontuação global. O aumento na pontuação para população geral foi observado para frutas totais, frutas integrais, cereais integrais, óleos e sódio. O principal contribuinte para desigualdade socioeconômica na qualidade da dieta em 2003 foi grupo étnico e, em 2008 e 2015, foi renda domiciliar per capita; a idade mostrou-se como fator persistente de desigualdade na qualidade da alimentação ao longo do período estudado. Os IC indicaram que indivíduos de menor renda apresentaram maiores pontuações no IQD-R em 2003; no entanto, houve mudança em favor dos indivíduos de maior renda em 2008 e 2015. Em 2015, observou-se diferenças entre os componentes do IQD-R para escolaridade, renda, ocupação, sexo e etnia, sendo que os componentes cereais integrais, sódio e calorias provenientes de gordura sólida, bebida alcoólica e açúcar de adição estão entre os mais distantes dos valores ideais do índice. Os fatores associados positivamente à qualidade da dieta em 2015 foram número de doenças, renda e categoria \"outros\" de ocupação. Os associados negativamente foram consumo de energia, consumo de álcool, escolaridade, possuir etnia não branca e estar desempregado. Esses fatores explicam a qualidade da dieta em 54%. Conclusões - Os achados referentes às desigualdades observadas são úteis para subsidiar políticas públicas e ações específicas para diferentes níveis de escolaridade, renda, ocupação, sexo, grupo étnico e faixas etárias, além de incentivar ações voltadas ao estilo de vida saudável. / Introduction - Diet quality is influenced by socioeconomic inequalities. However, there is lack of evidence regarding the level of inequalities in diet quality, and whilst there are wide-ranging efforts to promote healthier diets, issues regarding the dimensions of equity in health are neglected. Therefore, it is essential to understand these issues for development and appropriate implementation of specific interventions in public health. Objective - To evaluate diet quality of residents in São Paulo city of 2003, 2008 and 2015 and its association with SDH. Methods - Data from the ISA-Nutrition cross-sectional study of 2003, 2008 and 2015 were used, with a probabilistic sample of adolescents, adults and older adults residents in São Paulo city. Socioeconomic and lifestyle data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire and food consumption, through 24-hour dietary recalls. The diet quality was assessed based on the Revised Brazilian Healthy Eating Index (BHEI-R). The descriptive variables were compared using a 95% confidence interval. Differences between BHEI-R means, and its components were compared across age group, year of study and structural SDH. The association of inequalities and SDH with diet quality was based on multiple linear regression models and on the concentration index (CI), which allowed the identification of income-related inequality in diet quality among individuals with different socioeconomic levels. Results - We observed that the BHEI-R scores gradually improved over 12-years, with older adults showing the greatest improvement. The increase in overall population score was observed for total fruits, whole fruits, whole grains, oils and sodium. The main contributor to socioeconomic inequality in diet quality in 2003 was ethnic group, and in 2008 and 2015, it was per capita household income; age was a persistent factor of inequality in diet quality over the years. Concentration indices indicated that individuals with lower income had higher scores on BHEI-R in 2003; however, there was a shift in favor of higher income individuals in 2008 and 2015. In 2015, there were differences among BHEI-R components for education, income, occupation, sex and ethnic group, and the components whole grains, sodium and calories from solid fat, alcoholic beverage and added sugar are among the furthest from the index reference values. Factors positively associated with diet quality of residents in São Paulo city in 2015 were number of diseases, income and \"other\" category of occupation. Factors negatively associated were energy, alcohol consumption, education, ethnicity nonwhite and being unemployed. These factors explain the diet quality in 54%. Conclusions - The observed inequalities are useful to subsidize public policies and specific actions for different levels of education, income, occupation, sex, ethnic group and age groups, as well as to encourage actions aimed at a healthy lifestyle.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2017-05-17T15:41:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 anacristinacostasoares.pdf: 998419 bytes, checksum: 97454608cf6a9babbaee756fc47a8017 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-05-17T16:17:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 anacristinacostasoares.pdf: 998419 bytes, checksum: 97454608cf6a9babbaee756fc47a8017 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-17T16:17:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 anacristinacostasoares.pdf: 998419 bytes, checksum: 97454608cf6a9babbaee756fc47a8017 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-09-28 / Pesquisas realizadas sobre a desigualdade racial no Brasil têm indicado, dentre outras áreas de exclusão, a baixa presença de negros (pardos ou pretos), nas instituições superiores de ensino. A partir desta constatação, as ações afirmativas que objetivam facilitar o acesso de pretos e pardos no ensino superior têm sido implantadas em várias universidades federais no Brasil. Na Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora/UFJF esta política foi iniciada no ano de 2006. Através dos dados disponibilizados pela UFJF este estudo identificou situações de igualdades e de desigualdades no perfil e no acesso tanto do candidato inscrito quanto do candidato aprovado, de acordo com sua cor autodeclarada. Os resultados obtidos revelaram desigualdades entre os grupos de cor seja no perfil sócio-econômico, seja no grupo de ingresso, mostrando como atua a discriminação racial no estilo brasileiro. / Research studies on racial inequality developed in Brazil have indicated, among other exclusion fields, the low presence of afro-descendent Brazilians in college education. Departing from this evidence, affirmative action aiming to facilitating access of black students (“pretos” or “pardos”) in higher education has been implemented in several Brazilian federal universities. At the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) this policy was initiated in 2006. Using data made available by UFJF administration, this study has identified both equality and inequality situations concerning both candidates and accepted students according to their self-declared skin color. The results have showed inequalities among color groups concerning both their socio-economic profiles and access groups, showing how Brazilian-style racial discrimination works.

Today’s high school students will face a host of economic problems such as the demise of the social safety net, mounting college student debt, and costly health care plans, as stated in the rationale for financial literacy provided by the Council for Economic Education’s National Standards for Financial Literacy. These problems are compounded by growing income and wealth inequality and the widespread influence of neoliberal ideology. Although one of the major goals of economics education is to teach students to make reasoned economic choices in their public and private lives and provide the skills to solve personal and social economic problems, little empirical research has been conducted on how these goals are addressed. Secondary economics education research has primarily focused on measuring students’ grasp of neoclassical economics while a separate body of literature provides theoretical critiques of that approach. This study responds to the gap presented by these separate camps by capturing the economics discourse of a high school economics and personal finance course in relation to the role of economic decision-making in a democracy, and the space to hold values discussions. Using case study methodology that included analysis of student and teacher interviews, classroom observations, the standards and official curriculum, lesson plans, and student-produced documents, the study provides deep, context-dependent knowledge about how the official curriculum is manifest in the classroom. Findings reveal that the role of economic decision-making and values discussions were given very little space. The discourse was heavily focused on the acceptance of the science and mastery of technical knowledge about personal finance for the dual purposes of preparing students to succeed on the W!SE Financial Literacy Certification Test and preparing students to navigate and succeed in a fixed economic reality firmly committed to neoclassical economics. The role of economic decision-making was diminished by the foregrounding of financial literacy over economics, which served as a mechanism of power to send the silent message that economic circumstances (such as wealth inequality) change through individual choices and that economic and social phenomena can be understood and addressed through the application of technical approaches.

This master thesis aims to find out the socio-economic factors, which most affect the level of income inequality in society. The aim is to quantify the contribution of each social groups to the overall income defferentiation by decomposition of some income inequality indicators. The thesis is focused on a group of people based on their social status in society and their level of education, and so it is determined in relation the social background and income level. Income distribution strongly affects the value of risk-of poverty, and therefore this thesis put emphasis on the relationship between income inequality and poverty rate of each group. Development of various indicators measuring income inequality provides a comprehensive overview of the situation of income differentiation in the Czech Republic and also indicates the trend for income distribution in the last period.

Cette thèse porte sur l’étude des inégalités dans un cadre macroéconomique, d’un point de vue théorique ainsi qu’empirique. Dans un premier chapitre, j’écris et simule un modèle basé-agents capable de répliquer les distributions fat-tailed des richesses observées empiriquement dans les économies développées. Dans un second chapitre, je prolonge ce modèle théorique pour étudier l’impact économique des discriminations interpersonnelles et institutionnelles. Lorsque les discriminations institutionnelles cessent, l’état final des inégalités dépend de l’économie au moment de la fin de ces discriminations : plus l’économie est organisée, plus le temps nécessaire à une égalisation des revenus et richesses entre ethnies est long, voire infini. Dans un troisième chapitre empirique, j’étudie l’évolution des inégalités de salaire entre Noirs et Blancs aux États-Unis entre 1960 et 2015, en me concentrant sur la période 2000-2015. Je traite les biais de sélection liés à l’asymétrie raciale envers l’emprisonnement, et montre que l’écart - en conditionnant par l'âge et les diplômes - entre salaires médians des Noirs et des Blancs atteint un maximum en 2012. En utilisant la méthode de régression quantiles non-conditionnelles conjointement avec la décomposition de Blinder-Oaxaca, j’établis que la part non-expliquée de cet écart reste stable durant la Grande Récession. Enfin, dans une post-face, en utilisant les métadonnées de RePEC, j’établis que la part des articles scientifiques consacrés à l’étude des crises augmente significativement après 2008 pour 13 des 30 « top journals » en économie. / This PhD dissertation focuses on wealth and wage inequality, and the macro-economy. In a first chapter, I write and run a small macro agent-based model (M-ABM) in which I study the resultant distribution of wealth among households. I show that this model generates fat- tailed distributions of wealth in the household sector, as empirically observed in advanced economies. In a second chapter, I extend this model to study the macroeconomics of interpersonal and institutional discriminations against racial minorities. When discrimination is at work, racial disparities in income and wealth arise. The effect of the abolition of institutional discrimination is path-dependant: the more the economy is organized when this institutional change occurs, the more time it takes to get back to the counter-factual situation where no institutional discrimination was set up in the first place. In a third chapter, I study the evolution of the difference of median log-annual earnings between Blacks and Whites in the US between 1960 and 2015, focusing on the 2008 crisis. I control for selection arising from racial differentials in institutionalised population, and find that the unconditional racial wage gap attains a maximum in 2012. Controlling for age and education, I obtain the same result. Using unconditional quantile regressions, I show that the unexplained part of the unconditional racial wage gap has not increased during the crisis. Finally, in an afterword, I use metadata from RePEC to show that the share of economics papers published in the 13 of the 30 "top" journals containing "crisis" in their titles and/or abstracts has significantly increased in 2008.

No description available.

Educational assortative mating and earnings inequality has both increased in both Europe and the United States in the last decades. As a result, educational assortative mating, or educational homogamy, has been suggested as a potential explanation for the increase in earnings inequality. According to this hypothesis increased sorting on education will lead to polarization between lower and higher-educated couples where the advantages of the latter will compound on one another and lead to increased economic inequality.   The majority of the studies to date report a non-relationship between educational assortative mating and earnings inequality, one of the exceptions being a study of Denmark. This exception has led sociologists to theorize that the impact of educational assortative mating could be especially strong in the Nordic countries. In this study I test this hypothesis by employing a novel decomposition method, the Theil-index, to answer if increases in educational assortative mating are associated with increases in earnings inequality in Sweden between 2000 and 2010, using data from the Standard of Living Survey (LNU).   The result is a non-relationship between homogamy and earnings inequality and an overall decrease in earnings inequality in the sample. The result is another null result for the hypothesis that educational homogamy leads to inequality, and points to a larger discrepancy between singles and couples than between couples. If corroborated, this decrease in earnings inequality would mean a divergence, in earnings inequality, between partnered individuals and the general population. Future studies should focus on the extent of this divergence.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Robert Schaeffer / World-system theorist Immanuel Wallerstein made two theoretical assertions in Historical Capitalism that (a) significant inequalities in the “margin of safety against…endemic dangers and erratic violence” for people in different zones of the world economy persisted over long periods of time and (b) that the “margin of safety” for people in the periphery has actually deteriorated. This study set out to test this theory by examining mortality data for countries in different zones of the world-economy. It identified a set of health-related proxies for “endemic dangers and erratic violence”, infectious diseases (malaria, polio, tuberculosis, and influenza), chronic diseases (cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular), erratic violence (homicide, suicide, and motor vehicle accidents), and also infant mortality and life expectancy for women and men. It gathered data from the United Nations Statistical Division’s Demographic Yearbook for a select sample of countries in different zones of the world-economy (core, semiperiphery, and periphery) from 1950 to 2010, and examined how mortality from these dangers changed during this period. This study found that mortality data for infectious diseases did not provide much support for Wallerstein’s theoretical assertions. But the mortality data for chronic disease and erratic violence provided strong support for Wallerstein’s assertions. The data on life span provided some support for Wallerstein’s first assertion, but not for his second. Overall, the findings generally support Wallerstein’s theories and suggest ways that health-related inequalities might be addressed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / William F. Blankenau / This dissertation encompasses three essays on the macroeconomics of human capital and economic growth. Below are the individual abstracts for each essay. Essay 1: Does Public Education Spending Increase Human Capital? I investigate the effect of public education spending on the quality of human capital as measured by international student test scores in science and mathematics, conditional on the efficiency of a country's governance. Combining World Bank country level data on government efficiency with rich micro data from the OECD PISA-2009, I estimate a human capital production function from student level data. Prior work suggests that public education expenditures are inconsequential for student achievement. I illustrate that public education spending matters for student test scores when one uses student level data instead of aggregate country level data. These results are robust to controlling for governance measures such as corruption control and regulatory quality. An implication is that less efficient government does not preclude improving test scores through education spending. Essay 2: Inequality of Opportunity in Education: International Evidence from PISA. I provide lower-bound estimates of inequality of opportunity in education (IEO) using micro-data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The measure represents variation in student mathematics test scores which can be explained by predetermined circumstances (including parental education, gender, and additional community variables). I explore the heterogeneity of the measure at the top and bottom of the test score distribution, and demonstrate that IEO accounts for 10 percent of the variation in test scores for students at the top and bottom of the test score distribution. Using this inequality measure I establish three main conclusions. (1) IEO decreases overall in response to an increase in preprimary enrollment rates. An implication here is that improvements in early childhood education might mitigate the effects of IEO factors for some students. (2) IEO increases in a manner which relates to overall inequality. This indicates the possibility of a more general persistence to inequality factors. An implication is that equity-based education policies can be a key tool for reducing income inequality. (3) There is evidence of an equity-efficiency tradeoff in education. An implication here is that public education policies aimed at reducing IEO might hinder overall education efficiency, in that it decreases academic achievement for some groups of students. Essay 3: Public Education Spending and Economic Growth: The Role of Governance. Although the theoretical literature often connects public education spending to growth, individual empirical findings sometimes conflict. In this paper I propose that inefficiencies in public education spending might explain these inconsistencies. Using a dataset from both developed and developing countries observed over the period of 1995 to 2010, I demonstrate that the efficiency of public education spending on growth depends on a country's level and quality of governance. I also find evidence that increasing educational spending is associated with higher economic growth only in countries that are less corrupt. These findings have important implications for the formation of effective education policies in developing countries. They illustrate that efficient public education spending augments economic growth in a way that increased spending alone does not match.