A A comparative study of urban occupational structures: Brazil and United States

Abstract

This paper compares the occupational structure of cities in Brazil and United States aiming to evaluate the extent to which the economic structure of these urban agglomerations is associated with the different stages of development, specifically when comparing a rich country with a developing one. Using a harmonized occupational database and microdata from the Brazilian 2010 Demographic Census and the U.S. American Community Survey (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012), results show that Brazilian cities have a stronger connection between population size, both with occupational structure and human capital distribution, than the one found for cities in the United States. These findings suggest a stronger primacy of large cities in Brazil's urban network and a more unequal distribution of economic activity across cities when compared to USA, indicating a strong correlation between development and occupational structure.

Cities, lights, and skills in developing economies

“…Third, the IBGE recently defined arranjos populacionais by aggregating municipios on the basis of urban density and flows to work or school (IBGE, 2016). A few researchers have employed these units Díaz-Lanchas et al, 2018;Scherer and Folch, 2017), and we will compare them to our metropolitan areas when describing the spatial distribution of skills in Sections 3 and 4.…”