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Racial Inequality in the Uruguayan Labor Market: An Analysis of Wage Differentials between Afro-descendants and Whites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Marisa Bucheli  and
Rafael Porzecanski
Marisa Bucheli
Affiliation:
University of Granada, Spain. Department of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad de la República, Uruguay, marisa@decon.edu.uy
Rafael Porzecanski
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, UCLA. rporze@ucla.edu
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Abstract

Latin America is a region of sharp ethnic inequalities. Uruguay has usually been considered an exception to this pattern, although no data were available to confirm this assumption until recently. This article uses the Household Survey of 2006 to analyze the wage gap between Afro-descendants and whites through OLS equations, decompositions, and quantile regressions. The analysis finds that discrimination explains approximately 50 percent of the racial wage gap for men and 20 percent for women. Discrimination operates partly through occupational segregation. Differences in schooling are the most important explanatory factor for the rest of the gap. Quantile regressions show that discrimination declines across percentiles for men.

Type
Research Note
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 113 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2011

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