Vulnerabilidade à pobreza no Brasil: medindo risco e condicionalidade a partir da função de consumo das famílias

Abstract

Although many families are not poor today, some of them are susceptible to be poor in the future due to conjectural or idiosyncratic events. This susceptibility is related to a vulnerability concept, which represents the well-being loss caused by the uncertainty of events and the absence of effective instruments to manage it. Following this concept, the objective of this paper is to analyze the well-being of the Brazilian population with a consumption function, adding dynamic vulnerability aspects to static assessments of poverty. The database that was used is POF 2002-2003 survey, which has information for only one period. Due to this limitation, a bootstrap algorithm is used in order to simulate the stochastic process in household consumption. When analyzing the relation between poverty and vulnerability, it is verified that the poor are the most vulnerable, owing to the low level of expected consumption. In addition, it is found that the phenomenon of high conditionality to poverty is associated to reduction in risks.