Summary of the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) 2011: income growth was higher in the lower income classes

Source:  www.ibge.gov.br

The Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) studies on an annual and permanent basis the general characteristics of the population, education, employment, income, housing and other, with variable periodicity, according to the information needs of Brazil, such as migration, fecundity, marriage status, health, food security, among other themes. The PNAD 2011 shows that from 2009 to 2011, the real average monthly income grew 8.3%. By income brackets, the largest increase in income (29.2%) was seen in the 10% with lower incomes. Overall, there was a reduction in income growth as its value increased.

PNAD 2011 shows the Gini coefficient in Brazil decreased from 0.518 in 2009 to 0.501 in 2011. Regionally, only the North saw an increase, from 0.488 in 2009 to 0.496 in 2011. In other regions the increase in income was higher for the poorest, and lower for the 10% with the highest incomes. A more significant reduction was seen in the South (from 0.482 to 0.461).

The real average monthly income of permanent households was estimated at R$ 2,419.00 in 2011, representing a real gain of 3.3% compared to 2009 (R$ 2,341.00). There was an increase of household income in all major regions. The Northeast had the lowest variation (2.0%) compared to 2009, as well as the lowest value (R$ 1,607.00).

Women's income amounted to 70.4% of men's income. In 2011, the real average monthly income of men was R$ 1,417.00 and of women was R$ 997.00. Proportionally, women received 70.4%. In 2009, the proportion was 67.1%. In addition, there were proportionally more women employed without income or only receiving benefits (10.0%) than men (5.8%).

Formal jobs increased 11.8% from 2009 to 2011. From 2009 to 2011, there was an increase of 3.6 million employees with a formal contract in the private sector. 74.6% employees in the private sector had a formal contract. The income of employed people grew from R$ 1,242.00 to R$ 1,345.00, from 2009 to 2011. From 2009 to 2011, income of domestic workers without a formal contract increased 15.2%.

There are an increased number of workers with high school and university diplomas. From 2009 to 2011, the employed population increased the percentage of workers with at least secondary education (43.7% to 46.8%) and workers with at least a university degree (from 11.3% to 12.5%), while the percentage of workers with incomplete primary education fell from 31.8% to 25.5%.

There is an increased number of employed people in the sectors of services, trade and construction. The number rose 5.2% in the service sector (41.5 million people), 1.9% in trade and repair (16.5 million) and 13.6% in construction (7.8 million), 2009 to 2011, while falls were recorded from -7.3% in the agricultural sector (14.1 million) and -8.0% in manufacturing (12.4 million).

The increase of employed people in 2011, associated with the reduction of unemployed, brought as a result a significant drop in the unemployment rate, which fell from 8.2% in 2009 to 6.7% in 2011. In the South, PNAD saw the lowest unemployment rate (4.3%) and the highest in the Northeast (7.9%). In 2011, approximately 6.6 million people were unemployed. Despite the significant drop in the unemployment rate in Brazil, a greater difficulty in entering the labor market still persists, for some groups. Of the unemployed, 59.0% were women, 35.1% had never worked; 33.9% were between 18 and 24 years old, 57.6% were black or brown and 53.6% of them had not completed school. PNAD also confirmed the downward trend in child labor (5-17 years) in 2011. In two years, there was a reduction of 14%. However, child labor reaches 3.7 million.

It was observed that the illiteracy rate among people aged 15 or older in Brazil in 2011 was 8.6% (12.9 million illiterates), 1.1 percentage points less than in 2009 (9,7%, 14.1 million illiterates). 96.1% of the illiterate had 25 years or older. Of this group, over 60% were 50 years or older (8.2 million).

Women are more educated than men, especially between 20 and 24 years of age.  In 2011, the population aged 10 years or older had an average of 7.3 years of study. Women, in general, were more educated than men, with an average of 7.5 years of schooling, while men had 7.1 years of schooling.

From 2009 to 2011, the school enrollment rate of children between 6 and 14 years old increased by 0.6 percentage points, reaching 98.2%. As for young people between 15 and 17 years, the percentage dropped from 85.2% to 83.7%, in the same period.

In 2011, the resident population in Brazil was estimated to be at 195.2 million, an increase of 1.8% (3.5 million) compared to 2009. Women represented 51.5% (100.5 million) of the population and men 48.5% (94.7 million). People 29 years old or younger accounted for 48.6% of the population and those that are 60 years old or older, 12.1% in 2009, these values were, respectively, 50.2% and 11.3%, indicating that the population is having an aging trend.

This and other information can be viewed in full in the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) 2011(in Portuguese)

A quick one on Hungarian Progress

By Angela Hariche

Just returned from a trip to Budapest. We arrived on what was St. Martin's Day, November 11th. Each year on that day, you  must eat goose and drink the new wine to ensure financial growth and well-being for the coming year. St. Martin is indeed the patron saint of well-being.

Lake Balaton, Budapest. Photo: http://www.destination360.com

So, we did what we were told and ate our goose and drank our wine. I will report back this time next year with findings.

Then, in honour of St. Martin, I got back to the office and did a bit of digging around Wikiprogress and the Hungarian Central Statistics Office for well-being indicators. Here is a sampling of what I found:

Sustainable Development Indicators in Hungary: This publication is in Hungarian but Google translate does help. Also, the table of contents is in English.

There are 10 domains for sustainable development in this publication, these being:

Socio-Economic Development

Sustainable production and consumption

Social inclusion

Demographic changes - migration 

Public health

Climate change and energy

Sustainable transport

Natural resources

Global partnership

Governance and public life

I encourage you to have a look at this publication as their indicator breakdown is interesting and very specific. I very much like the "global partnership" and "demographic changes" domains. Nice to see that migration is included. 

Establishing Indicators for Measuring Social Progress in Hungary is also an interesting overview of measuring progress in Hungary, with emphasis on the need for indicator sets to better understand progress. 

And finally, here is a paper by GPRNet member, Laszlo Pinter, et al.: Developing a System of Sustainability Indicators for the Lake Balaton Region, which looks at measuring progress in a small area in Hungary. 

Our concierge in Budapest said that all this week "counts" as St. Martin day, so you still have time to eat that goose and drink that wine...you never know.

Thanks,

Angela

The land will belong to those who fight for it: The increasingly visible hand of immigration policy in the South

In the last few years, political developments in Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa have forced the world to face a new reality: people are moving more often and easier than in the past. But in comparison to the glorified age of migration of the mid-19th century when many Europeans fled to the New World, this migration era is different. This migration is about flexible mobility.

For one, people are now moving for shorter time periods and returning or moving on to other places, at least when migration policies are relatively open. The temporary nature of these movements is associated with an increase in communication technology but also a drop in the cost of transportation. This is unlike population movements in the mid-19th century when people moved for longer periods. Second, the rise in short-term migratory flows continues despite the fact that many governments are raising barriers to enter their country – a phenomenon which did not exist during the migratory movement to the new world when labour was openly sought. The barriers are not stopping people from leaving their countries however. Instead, they are merely contributing to the development of new routes to other countries – sometimes to countries that have no recent past experience with mass immigration. Without first acknowledging the lack of clear policy in many of these countries, the levee has to break. And in many places it already has.

In one of the worse cases, the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire -largely spurred by debate over who belongs in the country- has left about 2000 people dead. Other cases have only uncovered the potential consequences. In May of 2008, a series of xenophobic raids in South Africa left 62 people dead. Similar cases have surfaced more recently in Mexico and Morocco.

Many, if not most countries have taken a very intolerant stance on immigration. In fact deportations, while usually highly mediatised in the richer countries, are on the rise everywhere. In 2005, Malaysia ordered the mass expulsion of more than 400 000 illegal immigrant workers, mainly from neighbouring Indonesia. The United Nations estimate that in 2009 Angola expelled 160 000 Congolese, while the Democratic Republic of Congo expelled 51 000 Angolans. South Africa (165 270) and Libya (53 842) also figure at the top of the list.

Without a proper policy of integration, the world’s new countries of immigration walk a fine line between social cohesion and outright civil disorder. Côte d’Ivoire is still feeling the repercussions. Many argue that the seeds of the current conflict, which has existed on-and-off since 2002, were planted when policy in the 1960s encouraged immigration, but did not set the basis for integration or access to citizenship. The country found itself with one-quarter of its population foreign-born when Ivoirité took center stage in the country’s politics – and an air of xenophobia ensued.

Interestingly, many of the Gulf countries find themselves today with immigrant populations totaling up to 80% of their total populations. One has to wonder whether the recent Arab revolutions can be successful in these countries without the support of immigrants.

A full migration policy needs to include clear immigration rules, facilitation for integration and a transparent understanding of citizenship rules. But this is not enough – administrative capacity in the South is limited. Policy-makers in developing countries already have their hands full and ensuring that rules and regulations on immigration are followed is often secondary priority. In short, what is written down is not necessarily reflected in reality.

Immigration policy, rather, needs to consider the realities of the country. In the South, informality prevails and administrative capacity is limited. Providing things such as freedom of association and speech, social security benefits and access to formal jobs is part of an entirely different debate. They may be viewed as luxuries even to non-immigrants.

Successful integration in the South rests on providing the basics required to live and work: adequate living arrangements, basic health services and access to educational services for immigrant children. It also rests on the perception of the locally-born. Discrimination can be the strongest deterrent for successful integration, and the onus falls on several people to attenuate potential conflict: political but also traditional leaders and migrant associations for instance.

There is no easy solution. Just look at OECD countries. A succession of countries, namely Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have recently declared that multiculturalism has simply not worked in their respective countries, after years of integration policies and debate. It amounts to perhaps yet another piece of evidence of the shift in wealth: countries in the South are increasingly facing issues which have been plaguing countries in the North since the end of the War: how to get people with different cultures to work and play nicely. And perhaps 50 years of experience on “what hasn’t worked” is a good starting point for newly emerging immigration countries.

[1] The title references Côte d’Ivoire former president Felix Houphouët-Boigny’s famous immigration policy slogan: “The land belongs to those who cultivate it”.

Jason Gagnon

Linking Migration and Development: What Comes after Puerto Vallarta?

The 4^th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), held in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 8-11 of November, has been the opportunity for representatives from the civil society and governments to share and discuss on the migration-development nexus. But it is not sure that the vivid debates that have taken place since the beginning of the meeting really contribute to changing the preconceived thoughts that each delegate had previously to her arrival. As a matter of fact, the 2010 Global Forum has confirmed that we are still far from a global consensus on migration issues.

The non-binding nature of the GFMD

Since 2007, the GFMD has gathered representatives from the countries of origin, transit and destination to discuss best practices. It is not meant, however, to produce agreements or normative decisions. The non-binding nature of the Forum is by itself a point of disagreement between those who consider the flexibility of the process as a chance to move forward on such a sensitive issue as migration, and those who see it as an obstacle to concrete actions towards a more co-operative governance framework.

The role of the civil society

Even though Mexico decided to create a Common Space, where representatives from the civil society and governments have been able to share specific concerns, it is striking that the GFMD remains divided into two consecutive events: the Civil Society days (8 and 9 of November) and the Government days (10 and 11 of November). The fact that delegates from the two sectors barely meet is significant of the many discrepancies between them, in particular as regard the role of migrants, as well as their status and position in the society. In general, the delegates of the civil society complain that their recommendations are not really taken into account by governments.

The protection of the rights of the migrants

Mexico has decided to put the emphasis on the protection of the rights of migrants. But this is rather controversial. Indeed, most countries of immigration consider that migrants who try to irregularly cross borders violate immigration laws, and therefore cannot blame states for the difficulties they face doing so. By contrast, countries of origin, as well as most representatives from the civil society, reckon that by raising increasingly restrictive migration policies, countries of destination are responsible – even indirectly – for the violations of human rights that affect migrants.

The direction of the link between migration and development

In theory, sending and receiving countries share the same interest for migration and development issues. In this respect, the GFMD enables all parties to coordinate their policies to maximise the benefits associated with international mobility. However, in practice, there is a discrepancy on the direction of the link between migration and development. Indeed, while industrialised countries see development as a way to contain immigration, developing countries tend to consider emigration as an instrument for development.

The lack of discussions on the regulation of migration flows

The Global Forum, as its name itself denotes, focuses on the link between migration and development, but does not contemplate the regulation of migration flows. However, migration policies have been at the centre of many discussions, at least implicitly. Indeed, it is difficult to mainstream migration into development strategies while putting a brake on international mobility.

So, what should be the priorities of the next GFMDs and more generally of international discussions on migration and development?

· The dialogue between the representatives from the civil society and governments should be strengthened, by making the entire Forum a common space where NGOs, trade unions, employers and public authorities could share their experiences and work together towards a better governance of migration.

· It is time to stop disconnecting discussions on the link between migration and development and those on the regulation of migration flows. This implies a more co-operative framework, with binding negotiations on migration issues.

· Industrialised countries should acknowledge that they need foreign labour (not only qualified, but also unskilled and low-skilled workers), in particular to answer the challenge of population ageing. In this respect, political leaders need to explain the role and importance of immigration instead of playing with public’s opinion fears.

· As migration flows are mainly caused by public policy failures both in industrialised and developing countries, discussions on migration and development should be oriented towards a co-responsibility framework, which implies that public authorities take into account the spillover effects of migration policies on other countries.

· A governance framework based on co-responsibility should be centred around five main priorities: the protection of migrants, the accumulation of human capital, the promotion of financial democracy, the transfer of technology, and the strengthening of social cohesion.

A position paper on Linking Migration and Development: The Need for a Co-responsibility Framework will be soon available on the OECD Development Centre website.

David Khoudour-Castéras

Please feel free to comment below or contact me directly...

david.khoudour@oecd.org

Taxi Sister, please!

Last week we travelled to Dakar for a workshop on migration challenges from the perspective of the South. While we here in Europe are used to pictures and stories on TV of millions of people leaving Africa with boats to enter Fortress Europe, the reality is that most migration in West Africa is actually South-South; Burkina Faso to Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia to Ghana, Bénin to Nigeria. While we will blog about this important and emerging aspect of our changing world in a future post, today we will focus on simpler things, innovation in transportation.

Why? Because we met Maj. Our need for wheels to get us around town led to the discovery of a taxi service with a particularly catchy name: Taxi Sister. It turns out that there are 15 of these taxi sisters, of which Maj is a member, driving around town in seemingly new and comfortable Chinese-made cars. The catch, as you may have already guessed it: the taxi drivers are all women.

While it may not be uncommon to see female taxi drivers in other parts of the world, in Senegal the job of getting people from point A to point B by wheeled-vehicle is exclusively reserved to men. That is until President Abdoulaye Wade decided that female entrepreneurship in the country needed a boost and in September 2007 sponsored a small programme which saw an initial 10 women awarded credit to each purchase one Chinese Chery QQ on government credit, on which they are required to make monthly payments for five years or until they have fully paid off the 7 350 000 FCFA (11 205 Euros) cost of the car; the car from that point on is theirs. The women are free to manage their business as they see fit, but generally they work with hotels and resorts and only during the hours of 7am and 7pm to ensure their safety.

So how is this programme doing two and a half years after its initial launch date? Despite the initial plans for a large-scale operation (some sources cite that 2000 women were originally targeted), the programme has remained modest. In fact, only one expansion occurred (in 2009) where an additional five women were brought into the programme.

While receiving credit to launch their business has been great, life as a taxi driver for these women has not been so easy. Oumy, another taxi sister, complained about hostility from other male drivers, and although it has subsided, it was clear to us that two groups had emerged among Dakarois: those supporting the women entrepreneurs and those who find that their position as entrepreneurs themselves has been compromised. While driving on the highway for instance from the South of the city to the North, road workers waved in a friendly manner to our driver to demonstrate which of the two sides they supported. The women also pointed to the fact that they still feel tension with their male counterparts and although nothing serious has happened to them so far, the prospect of picking up the wrong client is still ever-present for them.

The link with progress? Despite its modest size, the undertaking is a huge collective psychological step for a country whose population is 95% Muslim and where most economic decisions are made by men. The programme has also been a step in providing more female training in ways that might benefit them outside of the taxi service: mechanical knowledge, business planning, money management. The hope is that women will go on to attack male-dominated professions and pave the way for better equality in pay in all sectors. For now, the hope is that the small programme will encourage more women to drive taxis.

But can Taxi Sister really make a difference? Are these types of public programmes worth it? Shouldn’t the government be focusing on the core causes of the problem and not just merely on fixing the symptoms? This is probably part of a larger debate, and for now the programme is likely too small to make any direct conclusions. Change, at least in the short term is unlikely to be noticeable. For now though, 15 women drive around the plateau amongst the busy hustle and bustle of this African capital, winning their daily bread, and perhaps even a little pride.

Jason and Johannes