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OCR for page 196
CHAPTER 1 0
SoCIOECONoMIc FAC robs: FAMILY INCOME
As pointed out in Chapter S. the fertility rates observed
for each of the nine NIER contexts varied considerably.
Succeeding chapters showed that, at least at this level
of analysis, a variety of reproduction strategies have
been adopted by the populations of the different contexts.
The present chapter incorporates into the analysis the
socioeconomic variables. Among these, family income
appears to have distinctive importance and is the focus
of the discussion that follows.
The analysis below is limited to the urban contexts
s ince it addresses only monetary 7 Rime
_^ ~ , ~ ..._, Families have
been classified in four categories, depending on their per
capita monthly income at the time of the survey (between
197S and 1977):
(1) up to one-half the minimum wagel3
(2) between one-half and one minimum wage
(3) between one and two times the minimum wage
(4) over twice the minimum wage
This var table has been incorporated into the analys i s
according to its equivalent at the particular moment of
the time of interview; this precaution was taken since th
information concerned was not taken from the individual
life histories, but frown data included is the form dealing
with the domestic group. Although this disparity makes
interpretation of the results somewhat problematic, the
present analysis is only preliminary; later research will
be able to incorporate variables from the life histories.
The distribution of families according to income (Table
75) varies considerably from one context to the next. On
the one hand, Santa Cruz ~ Cachoeiro, and Sao Jose dos
Campos are somewhat similar, showing a degree of equil
196
.
. _
OCR for page 197
lg7
TABLE 75 Percent Distr ibution of Women Aged 15 Years
and Over, by Per Capita Monthly Income ( in fractions of
one minimum wage), Five Urban Contexts, at Time of
Survey: Br az i 1
Context
Up to Between 1/2 Between One Over
1/2 and One and Two Times Twice
Hin. Wage Min. Wage Min. Wage Min. Wage
Between 1/2 Between One
and One
Santa Cruz-Urt~an 2100 30~9 24~0 24~0
Cachoeiro do Itapeeirm 22.9 31~0 24.4 21.7
San Jose doe Campos 25;~1 29~3 21~6 24oG
"cite 42.9 23.3 1704 1603
Parnalba-Urban 70.3 16 0 ~ 5 0 9 7.2
brium among the four income groups, though the group
between one-half and one minimum wage has a slightly
greater relative weight.
In the Northeast, however, this
equilibrium gives way to an asymmetrical distribution with
a heavy concentration in the lowest bracket. Tn Recife,
42.9 percent of the families sampled fell into the first
income category; an even Are striking picture is pre-
sented by Parnaiba, where 70.3 percent of the families
sailed fell within the per capita income bracket defined
as up to half the minimum wage. These data reflect the
variations in economic development Anteing the nine contexts
descr ibed in the Appendix.
With regard to Recife, as pointed out in the Appendix,
the city's labor force has been characterized over recant
decades by intense f luctuations between employment, unem
ployment, odd jobs, and various kinds of urban underem-
ployment. The evolutionary rate for hiring of employees
and dismissals in the metropolitan region of Recife for
the period 1978-79 gives some idea of this fluctuation:
in industry, the number of workers hired fell from 170 to
166, while the nether of those dismissed rose from 150 to
194; in the service branch, while there was a rise in
hirings from 118 to 128, dismissals also rose, from 113
to 125 (FIDEPE, 1980). Moreover, there can be no doubt
about the underpayment of the labor force as a determinant
of the poverty that dominates the Northeast of Brazil;
even in the metropolitan region, 24 percent of all oc-
cupied persons work 56 hours or more per week.
As will be remembered, the urban economy of Parnaiba
is linked to a subsistence- or peasant-based economy cen-
tered on the large estates {latifundia), and mercantile
or commodity relations have penetrated very little. The
town is a collection and distribution center for products
OCR for page 198
198
of plant extraction. It also has a small manufacturing
branch that employs a. very limited number of people--
around 18 percent of the local labor force In full-time
employment, while most of its production is put out to
domestic or self-employed workers. As regards commerce,
here, too, 95 percent c)f active workers are self-employed.
Income from these activities is too low for subsistence,
and it thus becomes necessary to combine extractive,
industrial, and commercial activities and handicraf ts .
The bottom line of Table 75 clearly reelects this picture,
characterized by a small contingent of families integrated
into a formal market, with the majority engaged in oc-
casional or irregular activities.
An analysis of female fertility for each of the f ive
urban contexts and the four income groups yields some
interesting observations. Table 76 shows the average
number of children born to ever-married women IS years of
age or over who, at the time of the survey, came within a
given income bracket.
This table shows, f irst, that in all the contexts sur-
veyed, fertility decreases as per capita monthly income
rises. In Santa Cruz do Sul, it makes little difference
whether a woman belongs to the first or second income
bracket; the greatest decrease is for families with per
capita monthly income of over one minimum wage. In Sao
Jose dos Campos ~ virtually the same picture holds true,
although the coloring is somewhat more vivid. In Recife,
however, it does make a difference in the average number
of children whether a woman's family has ~ monthly income
of between one-half and one minimum wage: compared with
the first bracket, the decrease in fertility is around 30
percent. Unfortunately, it was impossible to assess the
evolution of fertility for all four income groups in Par-
naiba because of the extremely low number of women in the
two higher brackets; for the two lower groups, however,
there was a drop of 24 percent in the average number of
children.
Second, the table shows that, even when a given income
category is kept fixed, the various contexts show differ-
ent levels of fertility: Santa Cruz do Sul and Parnaiba
are at one extreme of a slope, especially as regards ache
first bracket, while Recife, Cachoeiro do Itapemirim, and
Sao Jose dos Cantos, with some small discrepancies among
themselves, form an intermediate group. This variation
in the average number of children per woman, which reaches
its peak--2. 49--for the poorest families, drops in a uni-
form manner until it reaches 0.32 for the bracket over
OCR for page 199
199
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OCR for page 200
200
twice the minimum wage. If Parnaiba is eliminated from
the comparison tsince the reduction in the variation may
be influenced by the fact that Parnaiba is not represented
in the two higher income brackets ), the maximum dif ference
between the contexts for the four brackets would then be,
respectively, 1. 6G, 1.27, 1. 04, and O .32. In other words,
the decrease in the vat iation between contexts as the per
capita monthly income of the families rises is a persis-
tent trend.
This trend may well reflect, among other things, the
effect of the population ° s degree of involvement in the
f ormal labor market O Such involvement requires more
skill, reflected, for example, in a higher level of
schooling; it also exposes people to a mass of information
related to health, hygiene, sex, and reproduction. In
Sao Jose dos Campos, for example' a survey of the big
companies, mainly the multinationals, showed that social
workers within the companies present the idea of planning
to employees whose productivity is falling off; this plan-
ning includes the reduction of fertility. ~ ~ ~
In their study
of social institutions and reproductive behavior, Loyola
and Quinte~ro (1982:43) make the following point:
· ~
. social institutions were observed to act
basically along Centralist lines, ice., they
induce or transmit, in an explicit or diffuse man-
ner, the pattern of the small conjugal family, whose
corollary is the idea of birth controls According
to the viewpoint of the institutional agents, such
a reproductive pattern is associated -- again at all
points of the survey in general -- to economic and
social problems (poverty, cost of living, social
marginality, etc.) and appears as a solution offered
to such problems in the shout or long term.
However, as Loyola and Quintero note further (pp.
43-45), this institutional role varies significantly from
one institution and from one context to another.
Thus, to give one example of a contextual variation,
the most general references to social problems can,
in a large town in the South undergoing intense
industrialization and with full employment (the case
of Sao Jose dos Campos at the Age of the survey),
be translated into other, more specific references
which basically concern the disorganizing effects
on the social fabric of the excessively intense pace
OCR for page 201
201
of industrialization and immigration; in Parnaiba
or Recife, they may take on the connotation of back-
wardness as compared with the South, while situa-
tions of unemployment and underemployment may be
seen as non-residual realities which affect the
population as a whole through their pathological
consequences: abandoned minors, prostitution
(Parnaiba and Recite), marginality and criminality
(Recife).
Finally, it should be noted that, in addition to the
basic criteria used to select the NIHR urban contextso-the
prevailing form of organization of production and the
social division of labor--or perhaps even as a result of
these criteria, the contexts have specific features that
may help to explain fertility levels. Thus in 1950, Santa
Cruz do Sul, a region with a large population of German
origin, already had a fertility rate considered low by
Brazilian standards; moreover, family size in Santa Cruz
has been highly influenced by property size, which has
fallen gradually over the last few decades because of the
successive sharing of inheritances among surviving
children.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
monthly income
