POVERTY AND WEALTH RELATIVE SOCIOECONOMIC PROFILE OF BRAZILIAN MUNICIPALITIES IN 2010

Abstract

Considering the diversity of economic and cultural realities in Brazil, the aim of this paper is to investigate, through the concept of relative poverty and estimation of a logit model, (i) the socioeconomic profile and the welfare conditions of relatively poor people in relatively rich municipalities and relatively rich people in relatively poor municipalities of the country; and (ii) which are the individual and social factors associated with living conditions of the relatively wealthy people and relatively poor people in Brazil. To achieve such goals, we used 2010 Census variables, which, once properly handled in Stata12® statistical software, were used to calculate a logistic regression. The results show that people with income between R$ 198,00 and R$ 278,12 can be either relatively poor or relatively rich dependent to where they live. Both can be facing wellbeing deprivation. Among the relatively poor people which are living in relatively wealthy municipalities, low educational level, being born in another municipality and not having access to treated water stand out. On the other hand, people who are relatively wealthy in relatively poor municipalities are more likely to have completed high school but have no advantage in terms of access to sewage.