Wage differentials between public and private sector workers and income inequality in Brazil

Two of my brightest colleagues, Pedro Souza and Marcelo Medeiros, have recently published a study on 'The contribution of wage differentials between public and private sector workers to the overall household income inequality in Brazil'.

The paper is published in Portuguese only  the title translation is my bad  but you may read the abstract:

We estimate the contribution of the wage differential between workers with the same attributes in the public and private sectors to the household per capita income inequality in Brazil. The estimate is based on counterfactual simulations and the contribution to inequality on a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient. Data comes from the Brazilian National Household Survey PNAD 2009. The differential corresponds approximately to 17% of the wage bill of workers in the public sector, is regressive and highly concentrated. However, because it amounts to a small share of the total income (1%) its contribution to the total inequality is of 3%. The sector composition effects on inequality are times higher than the segmentation (price) effects. These conclusions are robust to changes in the definition of the sectors and to different estimation techniques.

Assorted Links

1. An awesome aerial view of Hong Kong
   
   
2. An optimistic take on Brazil Housing Policy (and a different opinion)
   
   
3. University applications in the UK: what subjects are people applying for?
   
   
4. Mapping Twitter in African cities
   
   
5. Transportation and Demographics trends from the 2010 US Census (via Data Insights Blog)
   
   
6. 'U.S. Unemployment Rate,' By Andy Warhol (via Drunkeynesian)
   
   
7. Special Logistics Challenges Posed by Mega-Cities in Emerging Markets
   
   
8. Urban Playground - Buenos Aires (via Urban Tick)

Urban Picture

Evolution of  the New York Skyline (1876 - 2013)

(via @Demografia_CSIC)

[Click on the image to enlarge it]

[Image Credit: Retronaut]

Soundtrack: a duet of Miles Davis and LCD Soundsystem

Chart of the Day

The Education Gap in american metropolitan areas 

(by Alan Berube and Jonathan Rothwell - Brookings)

The Social Network Effect Behind Obesity

This is a nice talk by Nicholas Christakis on Sociology and Social Networks. It is very concise and well presented covering a quite broad range of topics such as suicide, social capital, collective behavior and social networks.

What attracted my attention though was the part on the Social Network Effect Behind Obesity, where Christakis talks about this paper he and James H. Fowler have published in The New England Journal of Medicine (in the video, skip to 19:06). Quite impressive!

The unintended consequence of licence plate schemes

A couple of cities such as São Paulo, Bogota and Mexico City have already tried to cut down on traffic using licence plate schemes. Needless to say they have achieved limited success  if any .

In this Freakonomics episode Dubner and Levitt talk about the universal law of 'unintended consequence' and how it applies to such schemes.

Assorted Links

1. 26th ERSA Summer School (ht Leo Monasterio)
   
   
2. Why Has Competition to Get into Top Colleges Become Much Tougher?
   
   
3. Good tuff question
   
   
4. 11 planned cities as seen from space (HT Joao Meirelles)
   
   
5. "Why don't you come over?", a campaign by gandul.info in response to the British one called "Don't come to England"
   
   
6. U.S. overlaid on the Moon for a sense of scale
   
   
7. A 52-meter tall tribute to Oscar Niemeyer in SP
   
   
8. The state of China cities 2012/2013
   
   
9. Worldwide Twitter Activity in Real Time (via infosthetics)

Is there a demographic divide between rich and poor countries ?

Here is a presentation by Hans Rosling (aka the “Mick Jagger” of TED) breaking down the myth of demographic divide between rich and poor countries.

(via Colin Marshall)

No wonder why we never get tired of watching. 

Message of the Day

(via tudo ao mesmo tempo agora)

Demographic Cliff

The issue of World Population Bomb is gradually losing ground to other issues such as imploding national populations and aging workforce.

Of course we always find those who sounds extremely pessimistic. Jim Russell (Burgh Diaspora blog), for example, points out to several declining places (low fertility and no migration attraction). According to him, Southern New England Is Dying, Puerto Rico Is Dying, China Is Dying, Germany Is Dying, America Is Dying, Sun Belt Counties Dying, Silicon Valley Is Dying, New York City Is Dying, London Is Dying, San Francisco Is Dying etc etc  ok. We understood, we're all dying anyway 

The McKinsey Global Institute has published a report on how aging populations will reduce global savings (15min audio summary). Other pessimist, Jonathan Last (author of 'What To Expect When No One's Expecting'), trumpets a coming demographic disaster:

"Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff. Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate." 

The fact is no one is actually optimistic about current demographic trends. Nancy Folbre (MIT) has a more moderate opinion, although still far from being optimistic.

This post is getting too long for my  time constraint  standards, so I'll end it with this chart by Simon Hedlin and a coulpe of related links.

[Image Credit: Simon Hedlin]

 Related Links:

• Working-age shift in Europe
• Labor productivity vs Demographics
• Will China’s demographic shift force a fall in investment share?
• Addressing China's looming talent shortage
• Assorted Links on Workforce and Education
• Skills deficit holds India back

Seoul's Cheonggyecheon Stream

For those flying to South Korea this year (XXVII IUSSP Population Conference or 9th Space Syntax Symposium), here is a place worth visiting! (hat tip Prof. Fred Holanda)

Porn star demographics

The Marginal Revolution blog led me to Jon Millward's page. Jon Millward is a sort of 'Ideas Detective', in his own words. Every now and then he comes up with a probing analysis of something 'new', like the last words of death row prisoners or call girl reviews.

His latest study makes a deep analysis of Porn star demographics. This is probably the largest study of porn stars ever undertaken, including age, race, hair color, birthplaces, film categories etc. It’s based on a massive data set of 10,000 porn stars extracted from the Internet Adult Film Database. 

Here is the 'Deep Inside Infographic' that combines all of the results (don't worry, the link is safe for work). And here is a map showing the birthplaces of female porn stars. California is reported to be the birthplace of one-third of all female porn stars!

obs. Jon Millward's work on the last words of death row prisoners is highly recommended!

Assorted Links

1. Brazil Ignores World Cup Costs to Lift Housing: Mortgages (via Adolfo Sachsida)
   
   
2. How names change from one generation to the next
   
   
3. Pablo Picasso and Le Corbusier (Bonus)
   
   
4. Free E-books on GIS by Esri (via Anderson Medeiros)
   
   
5. The Beatles - Unplugged [Full Album]
   
   
6. Five things economists know about immigration (via Drunkeynesian)
   
   
7. 'Why I Am Not a Christian' by Bertrand Russell
   
   
8. Building heights in Manhattan (via Carlos Gomes)

Airport Time-Lapse

Inspired by this striking composite image by Ho-Yeol Ryu, Cy Kuckenbaker filmed this beautiful timelapse.

(via Shinnfo).

Chart of the Day

The cost of living around the world.

[Image Credit: The Economist]

Annals of the Brazilian population association

My friend Ricardo Dagnino alerts the annals of every meeting since 1978 of the Brazilian Population Studies Association (ABEP) are available for download Here!

Related Links:

• UN Demographic Manuals On-line
• Applied Demography Toolbox
• PAA 2013 Preliminary Program

Assorted Links on Workforce and Education

1. What is a College Degree Worth?
   
   
2. Self-perceptions and college dropout
   
   
3. Fertility rate and female education (the US)
   
   
4. Age transition and working-age population in China - more here
   
   
5. The Role of Skills in a Growth Strategy for the UK
   
   
6. Older, but Not Yet Retired
   
   
7. "The vanishing workforce"
   
   
8. Share of employers that reported recruitment difficulties in 2010

[Image Credit: NYT; Data source: OECD report]

Spatial Equilibrium in Cities: the Isobenefit Lines

paper: Spatial Equilibrium in Cities: the Isobenefit Lines 

... many cities, particularly in Europe, are much more complex than this [monocentric urban model]. And in recent years, city planners have begun to place more emphasis on developing additional centers within cities. So it’s increasingly common for a city to have several centers performing different functions. 

D’Acci’s new model is designed to cope with this increased complexity. His idea is to calculate the benefit of a given location to a resident, taking into account the effect of all the city’s various amenities.Having done that, he calculates locations of equal benefit, connecting them with so-called “isobenefit lines”.

Related Links:

• luca d'acci webpage
• Urban Centrality: A Simple Index

off-topic: Enjoy your Sunday

Urban Picture

Brasilia (Brazil), by João Campello

Soudtrack:

The Economic Future of British Cities

Prof Henry Overman (SERC / LSE) gave a very interesting lecture a couple of weeks ago. The lecture was titled 'The Economic Future of British Cities: What should Urban Policy Do?'

He addressed several issues such as migration, housing, skilled workforce, labor productivity and regional wage disparities, to name a few.

You can download both the lecture and the slides here. You may also go further into Overman's writings on SERC blog - Part I, Part II.