Mudanças demográficas e seus impactos no mercado de trabalho: uma análise para o Brasil - 2011

Abstract

Demographic changes are affecting direct and/or indirectly the world economy. In Brazil, according to the United Nations (2015) data, the population over 65 years old represented 7.8% of the total population in 2015, and the forecast is that by the year 2030 this frame will reach 13.5%. Besides, another question to consider refers to the increase of foreign workers in Brazil. According to the General Coordination of Immigration (Coordenação Geral de Imigração, 2015), in 2010 decade there were an increase of 280% in work permits to foreign. With this growth of immigrants in the country, in addition to the relative increase in the elderly population and fall of the young population, the hypothesis is that an impact occur in the labor market. To capture these changes in the economy, a computable general equilibrium model will be used, which will allow us to capture the sectoral impacts that demographic changes and increase of immigrants causes in the Brazilian labor market. To do so, the first step was to divide the work force in three skill levels (low, medium and high) and four age groups (young, adult, mature and old) in order to calculate the elasticity of substitution of workers in 62 sectors of the Brazilian economy using the econometric methodology proposed by Das (2003). The first results indicate that workers have varying degrees of substitution, according to different sectors, education and age. In general, the lowest values of the elasticity of substitution belonged to the younger workers while the highest values belonged to the mature ones. This result indicate that mature workers are more replaceable by other age groups. Furthermore, the results indicate imperfect substitutability between workers and that the demographic transition tend to deepen this effect over the years to come. After the calibration of MID-BR (Labour market- Immigration-Demography- Brazil) model, it was possible to simulate the effects of the demographic transition and the entrance of immigrants in the national economy. As simulations’ main results, the increase of more educated workers affects more positively the national product and the sector of Manufacture of automobiles, trucks etc is the most dynamic in the Brazilian economy. The entrance of foreigners in the country positively affects the Brazilian real GDP, however, it decreases the wages of the more educated natives. Using data of the predicted economically active population from ILO Labour Statistics databases (LABORSTA, 2011), a simulation was made to capture the effects of the demographic transition on the 2010 decade. There was a negative effect on real GDP caused by workers new age structure, additionally young and adult age groups had higher wages while mature and elderly presented lower ones.