Employment duration and gender inequality in Brazil: the case of low-income families

Abstract

In this paper we use microdata from the national registry of the poor and vulnerable (Cadastro Único) and Annual Social Information Report (RAIS) to examine how individual characteristics of the labor force and family composition affect the employment duration in Brazil. The analysis of the duration of employment was performed based on the Cox proportional hazards model and on accelerated failure time models with and without treatment for unobserved heterogeneity using a database with more than one million individuals belonging to poor families. The results show that the presence of pregnant women or young children at home increases the risk of finishing employment link, as well as the presence of other relative in the formal labor market. In all these cases the effects are stronger for women than for men. It was also verified that the presence of adolescents in the home attenuates the domestic workload demanded from parents, eliminating the effect of reduction on employment duration caused by the presence of small children in the family.