“The friends of my friends are they my friends?”: the consequences of social capital for wage differences between men and women in Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify representative variables for social capital at the level of the individual, verifying its effects on the composition of wages and the consequent wage difference by sex and incomes quantiles. The National Health Survey is used to execute different econometric strategies in order to identify the impact of social capital on wages by sex. The results point to a clear effect of the stock of social capital on wages in general, but with a higher impact on female incomes, both in the average and in the salaries of women who are in the lowest salary rangers.