Search

Summary Brazil has always been considered to be a land free of racial and ethnic tensions. However, despite Brazil being famous for miscegenation, racial discrimination in Brazil has been documented in the literature, especially in light of the huge disparity between Brazil’s racial groups with respect to economic outcomes and education levels. The objective of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the economics of racial discrimination in Brazil. To this end, the effect of segregation on the income of workers is estimated using data from elementary schools in São Paulo, the largest city in the country. Measures of segregation in the educational system are evaluated using economic data obtained from the 2010 census. It is shown that segregation plays a fundamental role on the wage gap among racial groups. This effect may be attributed to the virtual absence of pretos and pardos in private schools. In public education, however, there is little separation along racial lines, which suggests that lack of access to social networks and to higher quality public schools may be the most important element in explaining wage differences. In Brazil, racial discrimination seems to work indirectly through socio-economic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Adverse weather shocks in the form of droughts increases violent crime rate in rural Brazil. • This effect appears to persist beyond the growing season and over the medium run. • Weather fluctuations are positively associated with agriculture yields as well as the overall economic activity. • The dominance of opportunity cost mechanism reflected in the income fluctuations of the agriculture and unskilled workers. This paper examines the effect of weather shocks on violent crime using disaggregated data from Brazilian municipalities over the period 1991–2015. Employing a distributed lag model that takes into account temporal correlations of weather shocks and spatial correlation of crime rates, I document that adverse weather shocks in the form of droughts lead to a significant increase in violent crime in rural regions. This effect appears to persist beyond the growing season and over the medium run in contrast to the conventional view perceiving weather effects as transitory. To explain this persistence, I show that weather fluctuations are positively associated not only with agriculture yields, but also with the overall economic activity. Moreover, evidence shows the dominance of opportunity cost mechanism reflected in the fluctuations of the earnings especially for the agriculture and unskilled workers, giving credence that it is indeed the income that matters and not the general socio-economic conditions. Other factors such as local government budget capacity, (un)-employment, poverty, inequality, and psychological factors do not seem to explain violent crime rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Countries can have distinct food systems depending on regional differences. • The proposed index is the first to measure the Brazilian food systems at state level. • The index ranks states on environmental, socioeconomic, and nutritional dimensions. • No state presented a high score for all dimensions, all of them can improve overall. • This methodology can be used by other countries to develop their own local indices. The sustainability of food systems is commonly measured at the global or national level using multidimensional indices. However, it is not possible to use such indices at subnational levels, because the data for many indicators are not available and large countries such as Brazil have completely different food systems depending on the state or region considered. This paper presents a sustainable food systems framework for Brazil and the Brazilian Multidimensional Index for Sustainable Food Systems (MISFS), which is the first index of its kind that considers local behaviors and actions to rank states and regions of the country. The dimensions and indicators included in the index were identified from a literature review and an exclusion criteria, which considered the Brazilian context, that ended up with 17 indicators divided in three dimensions (environmental, socioeconomic, and nutritional). We followed well-known procedures to create an interpretable multidimensional index, which include normalization, weighting, aggregating, and sensitivity analysis. The performance of the states was starkly different, regarding the indicators and dimensions considered. No state presented a high score for all three dimensions, and even states with a high MISFS score had room to improve in one or two dimensions. In general, high-income states scored well on socioeconomic indicators (e.g., agriculture education), but poorly on most environmental indicators (e.g., water footprint), and some nutritional indicators (e.g., obesity rate). This index is the first initiative to measure the Brazilian food systems according to local practices and behaviors at state level and it is a starting point to help policymakers understand the opportunities of improvement of their food systems. This study may also help other countries to develop their own frameworks and strategies to improve their regionalized food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose two indexes to account for the vulnerability related to COVID-19. • The northern and northeastern regions of Brazil have the highest degree of vulnerability from exposure to COVID-19. • The Indigenous population is the most vulnerable to infection with COVID-19 and is the most impoverished monetarily. • The Brown and Black populations are also at a disadvantage compared to the White and Asian groups. • Most states with the highest vulnerability from exposure to COVID-19 have also had the largest increase in death rates. This paper aims to show how much and in which way people in Brazil are deprived in terms of indicators directly related to the capacity to prevent and recover from infection with COVID-19. We use the Alkire-Foster (AF) method and a fuzzy-set approach as complements to measure multidimensional poverty within the context of the coronavirus pandemic. We propose two pandemic-specific indexes to account for the vulnerability related to the capacity to prevent infection with and to recover from the disease. The outcomes reveal structural deprivations in the country and considerable inequality among regions and ethnic groups. Rank correlation analyses suggest that the proposed indexes can trace the trends in increasing infection and a higher mortality rate in vulnerable regions. Compared to headcount ratio results, the fuzzy measures have more precise outcomes and are better able to capture the evolution in mortality patterns. Our empirical evidence offers an additional warning that the pandemic responses need to prioritize the most vulnerable groups and reinforces the need for coordinated national action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]