Salário mínimo, distribuição de renda e pobreza no Brasil

Abstract

This paper tries to evaluate empirically the potential contribution of minimum wage policies to enhance equity and ameliorate poverty in Brazil. Besides offering a detailed profile of minimum wage workers' according to personal attributes and position in the income spectrum, several simulation exercises are carried out to measure these impacts for an increase of 25% in the minimum wage, assuming distinct elasticities for the demand for unskilled labor. The main conclusion is that they are small. Therefore, even though the low levels in the recent past make it desirable a real increase in the minimum wage, a sharp action aimed at producing a better distribution of income calls necessarily for other policies and instruments.