Are Men Benefiting from the New Economy : Male Economic Marginalization in Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica
The economies of Latin America have undergone extensive reforms, raising concerns about how these changes have affected the labor market. But there is also increasing concern that the reforms may have deeper social ramifications as the new economie...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/12/1660277/men-benefiting-new-economy-male-economic-marginalization-argentina-brazil-costa-rica http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19404 |
| Summary: | The economies of Latin America have
undergone extensive reforms, raising concerns about how
these changes have affected the labor market. But there is
also increasing concern that the reforms may have deeper
social ramifications as the new economies strain the ability
of certain groups of men to work and to earn good wages,
fulfilling their traditional role as providers. Using
household surveys broadly covering the period 1988-97 in
urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica, Arias
examines the patterns of unemployment and real wage growth
for distinct groups of male workers to see whether there is
evidence of a deterioration in men's ability to be
economically self-sufficient. He finds no general trend of
male economic marginalization. The incidence and duration of
unemployment have increased the most for the typically
vulnerable group-young, less educated, informal sector
workers-but the increased duration of unemployment has also
affected older and more educated men. With respect to wages,
density and quantile regression analysis indicates that the
usual stories of wage marginalization of vulnerable workers
can hardly explain the observed variety of wage growth
patterns in the three countries. The positive wage
performance has been concentrated mainly in the higher
quantiles of the conditional wage distribution. This
suggests that differences in unobservable worker
characteristics, such as industriousness, labor market
connections, and quality of schooling, have been key
determinants of the ability of male workers in the region to
adapt to economic restructuring. These results suggest that
assistance should be targeted to some groups so that
frustrations in asserting an economic identity do not lead
to aggressive behavior. But they also show that we must look
elsewhere for the roots of the increase in socially
dysfunctional behavior. |
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