Role in the family and trajectory in the labour market: what we can apprehend from a Brazilian economic retrospective survey

Frederico L.B. Melo, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

The paper examines the economic differences considering the family nucleus (“head” with spouse, and female or male “head” without spouse) and “children” over 18 years old, focusing São Paulo Metropolitan Area (which congregates more than 10% of the Brazilian population) in late 1990’s. In order to study the trajectories in the labor market, a socio-occupational typology is developed using the “Grade of Membership”, a methodology appropriated to fuzzy sets. “Occupational trajectory” is regarded as the combination of successive occupational states and the transitions between them. The results show that women experience much more diversified trajectories comparing to men and have to face “precarious” pathways much more frequently. Three groups of socio-economic profiles structure by position in the family are identified: first, “male head” (with or without spouse); second, “female single head” and “female spouse”; and, third, “son over 18 years old” and “daughter over 18 years old”.