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From 1992 to 2014, Brazil experienced a decline in income inequality along with a significant increase in schooling level, though the latter was more pronounced among women. Brazil also experienced a decline in returns to education, whereas an opposite trend was observed in several developed countries and China. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of educational, marital, and labor market factors on the income inequality of married couples. We also analyze how changes in educational assortative mating affect their income. Our findings suggest that changes in educational marital sorting parameters had a small but statistically significant effect on household income inequality. We show that growth in female labor force participation and a decrease in the gender wage gap explain part of the decline of the Gini coefficient. Educational factors also explain a part of that decline. Nevertheless, the main driver of the reduction in income inequality among couples appears to be the overall decrease in the returns to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Brazil's fertility transition was the result of multiple socioeconomic transformations that started during the second quarter of the 20th century. Education expansion played an important role in this process by promoting changes in social norms and in assortative mating profiles. OBJECTIVE The goal is to estimate cohort fertility rates (CFR) of women in union by educational pairing (different combinations of men's and women's educational levels) and whether changes observed in assortative mating profiles were associated to the Brazilian cohort fertility transition. METHODS First, we estimate CFR by educational pairings for women cohorts born between 1925 and 1969. Second, we decompose the difference in CFR between younger and older cohorts into two components, the effects of changes in the composition of educational pairings (structural changes) and the rate effects (other factors). RESULTS The CFR of couples in Brazil declined from levels higher than 6 children per women for cohorts born in 1925-1929, to less than 3 children for women born in 1965-1969. Changes in the composition of educational pairing corresponded to approximately one-third of these reductions in cohort fertility. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that changes in the composition of educational pairing related to the rising education levels of men and women corresponded to an important share of the cohort fertility decline of women in unions. CONTRIBUTION The evaluation of the Brazilian fertility transition through the lens of cohort fertility and educational pairings may provide new insights and methodological alternatives for assessing fertility transition in countries that rely on censuses as the main data source for fertility estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euschistus heros (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) has two allopatric strains with a hybrid zone in central Brazil. Asymmetric dispersal and gene flow between these strains of E. heros have been observed, where the South strain (SS) moves more quickly to the northern regions of the country than the North strain (NS) to the southern areas. In addition, SS generally has a bigger body size and presents dark brown coloration, and NS is usually smaller in size and presents light brown coloration. Here, we studied the reproductive behavior and tested for the presence of assortative mating and reproductive barriers between the two allopatric strains of E. heros. Nonrandom mating was observed in the SS strain based on mating choice trials and the reproductive isolation indexes. SS females and males prefer to mate with their co-specific (same strain) partner, while NS insects showed no mating preference. The insect's pronotum width was positively associated with the mating choice suggesting size-assortative mating in E. heros. Reciprocal crosses between strains yielded similar reproductive outputs when compared with pure strain crosses, suggesting similar fitness of hybrid pure strains. The asymmetric gene flow in the hybridization zone that favors SS seems to be associated with the reproductive behavior of the species, which favors the typical phenotype found in the SS populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of homogamy in personality in heterosexual couples have arrived at inconsistent results and research of this issue in same-sex couples is almost non-existent. Moreover, homogamy in actual couples can differ from preferred homogamy in ideal partners. In Study 1, preferences for personality homogamy and perceived homogamy in actual relationships as measured by a Ten-Item Personality Inventory were assessed in heterosexual and homosexual men from Brazil and the Czech Republic. In men of both sexual orientations, we found preferences for homogamy in all personality characteristics except for Emotional Stability, while perceived homogamy in actual couples was limited to Extraversion in heterosexual couples. The results were nearly identical for both studied populations. In Study 2, resemblance in the Big Five personality traits measured by a 60-item NEO-FFI was tested in 49 actual heterosexual and 40 male same-sex long-term couples from the Czech Republic. Heterosexual partners resembled each other in Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness, whereas homosexuals only in Extraversion. Our results thus indicate that while preferences for personality homogamy exist in both heterosexual and homosexual men, they translate only partially into actual mate choice, especially in homosexual men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five color morphs of Paracentrotus gaimardi can be distinguished along the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: black, brown, gray, green, and pink. All co-occur and are apparently exposed to similar environmental conditions. This study compares the morphology of these color morphs and investigates their gametic compatibility. All specimens of the five color morphs matched earlier descriptions of the species. The number of lateral spines on globiferous pedicellariae, the presence of small ophicephalous pedicellaria, and the pattern of distribution of pedicellaria on the test were reliable morphological characters for taxonomic purposes. The five color morphs were not clearly differentiable in terms of morphology. Fertilization success in crosses within color morphs was greater than in the majority of heteromorphic crosses. Only three heteromorphic crosses - ♀gray and ♂brown, ♀black and ♂gray, and ♀brown and ♂black - were as successful as control, within-color morph crosses. Therefore, some color morphs seem to be partially isolated by an incipient barrier to fertilization. Low fertilization rates among color morphs should result in genetic divergence among them. In fact, genetic divergence at bindin and ATPase genes has been reported among color morphs of P. gaimardi. Natural selection seems to favor fertilization within color morphs, but the mechanism for this differentiation in gametic compatibility is not known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some species of sea urchins feature large variation in pigmentation. This variability may be the result of phenotypic plasticity or it may be associated with genetic divergence between morphs. Paracentrotus gaimardi exhibits five colour morphs (pink, brown, green, grey and black), which often occur side by side on the same rock. We studied genetic divergence between these morphs in three populations on the coast of Brazil. A fragment of the region encoding the mitochondrial ATPase 8 and 6 mitochondrial genes, a fragment of the intron of a nuclear histone and the entire nuclear gene coding for the sperm protein bindin were analysed. Mitochondrial DNA was differentiated between the pink and all other morphs, but the histone intron was similar in all colour morphs. In bindin, nine codons were found to be under positive selection and significant differences of allelic frequencies were observed in almost all pairwise comparisons between colour morphs. Although the molecular differentiation in bindin is not large enough to suggest reproductive isolation, some degree of assortative mating within morphs seems to be occurring in this species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate how the diffusion of dual-earner couples has affected aggregate levels of inequality in Brazil. More specifically, we analyze trends in the association between spouses' earnings and assess their implications for earnings inequality among couples from 1993 to 2015. For this purpose, we use log-linear models to distinguish three components of the association between spouses' earnings: a) the correlation between spouses' earnings among dual-earner couples; b) the relationship between husbands' earnings and wives' labor force participation; and c) the proportion of dual-earner couples. Counterfactual simulations allow us to estimate how inequality would change if the trends in the association between spouses' earnings and each of its components had been different. We show that changes in the gradient of wives' employment and compositional effects related to the increasing prevalence of dual-earner couples contributed to limit the decline in inequality over the studied period., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Evidence suggests that personality may influence romantic relationship quality in several ways. Quality of relationship can be affected by an individual's personality (actor effect), partner's personality (partner effect), by discrepancy between ideal and actual partners' personalities (discrepancy effect), or by similarity between partners' personalities (similarity effect). Most studies, however, focus on just one of these effects, their results are often ambiguous, and based on western populations. We tested all these effects at once in individuals from two distinct populations: Brazil and the Czech Republic. In total, 626 individuals in a long-term committed relationship completed the Ten-Item Personality Inventory for their own, actual, and ideal partner, and the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Hierarchical categorical regression analyses showed that the actor and partner effect contributed significantly, although weakly, to dyadic adjustment, while the impact of discrepancy and similarity was negligible. Explained variance was around 10% for the actor effect, around 30% jointly for actor and partner effects, and around 40% jointly for actor, partner, discrepancy, and similarity effects. The overall results were similar for both studied populations. Importantly, all reported effect sizes are small, which suggests that other factors contribute to dyadic adjustment more substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]