COMMUTING AND WAGE DIFFERENTIALS IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The commuting defines how daily travel to work in a municipality other than that of residence has become an increasingly present trend among Brazilian cities. It has also been the focus of different economic studies with a view to understanding its causes and consequences. Thus, the objective of this paper is to verify how individual characteristics that determine the probability of commuting, as well as to evaluate a hypothesis that these workers have characteristics that make then more likely to commuting and obtain different wages. For the estimation, the Heckman (1979) method was used, with the microdata of the Brazilian Demographic Census of 2010. Among the results are in real time, with higher education, which have already migrated to other municipalities, metropolitan and belonging to the southeast of the country are more prone to commuting. In addition, it was verified the existence of positive selection bias, indicating that these workers have characteristics that raise their average wages.