Education, Labor and Social Inequality (Educação, Trabalho e Desigualdade Social) (review)

Edited by experienced researchers in the field of social inequalities, Education, Labor and Social Inequality is a book whose thematic, theoretical and methodological width is undeniable. Showing the editors' concerns about empirical investigation, the articles gathered in this book use database and statistical techniques to support (or not) the theoretical raised hypothesis. The chapters' common goal is the comprehension of inequalities in labor market, in position reaching in occupational structure and in salary hierarchy, through features taken in individual, familial and organizational levels.

Jorge Alexandre Neves, Danielle Cireno Fernandes and Diogo Henrique Helal, as pointed out in the Introduction, are Economic Sociologists whose aim is to investigate the way economic phenomena influence social structure and mainly the way the social structure influence economic action, taking as reference the idea that economic phenomena are essentially social once they're socially embedded. Social inequality, as a theme, is a privileged field for such approach, in so far as structures of inequality are built in the interaction between social structure and economic action. In this volume, labor market and economic processes are mobilized for figuring out the dynamics of social structure, specifically for understanding the mechanisms that work for the reproduction of Brazilian social inequalities. Education is taken as an important variable for explaining salary differences and occupation reaching in all of the articles.

This book contains an introduction and seven chapters gathered in two parts. In part one, which has the same name as the book, three articles are gathered together. In all of them education is central for explaining the analyzed processes. In the first chapter, Murillo Marschner Alves de Brito examines the dynamics of working-related factors of children and teenagers in Brazil. The author uses data from cohorts between 10 and 15 years old, from 1988 to 1995. An extensive national and international bibliography is used to develop and articulate hypotheses at the micro level (as family composition) and macro level (as the educational system and the labor market). The determinant factors for infant work in Brazil are explained. Alves de Brito identifies a tendency to work and study articulation in working children and teenagers, and the consequent decrease in the number of children who only work (and do not study). One of his main results is that family composition is relevant for the determination of time taken for working, more due to its age composition than to its number of members. On the other hand, the enlargement of the education system was associated with the an increase in the number of children concentrating on education-related activities. The association between the parents' informal condition at work and the children's moneymaking activity is also an important finding. The author points out the need for taking into account inner-family socio-psychological processes for understanding the family's decision to integrate their children and teenagers in the labor market, once this choice isn't due only to the family welfare enlargement, but also to cultural and socio-psychological rules, responsible for the economic action meaning.

Flavia Xavier, Danielle Cireno Fernandes and Maria Carolina Tomás, in the second article, investigate salary hierarchy in Brazil through formal education, taking into account the changes in educational patterns and occupational structure in Brazil. They find that, although education decreases between 1982 and 1996, it has a positive association with income and occupational attainment. The family heritage, measured through the father's occupation and the mother's level of education, has a constant effect in the determination of salaries and in individual occupations, a conclusion that rejects meritocracy as an explaining factor for such social inequalities.

In the third article, Elaine Vilela uses theories of human capital, social capital and cultural capital to investigate issues on occupational attainment and salary differences for just arrived immigrants in Brazil, who come from some countries in Latin America, as well as China and...