The results of the 1st edition of the IDB-IMDS-SBE 2022 Award

The results of the first edition of the IDB-IMDS-SBE Award 20122, whose theme was Youth in Brazil, was announced. The technical papers, individual or collective, had to address one of the following themes: Young People and Job Opportunities in Brazil, Education and Labor Market Transition, Inequalities of Opportunities for Young People in Brazil, and Young People and Health in Brazil.

Among the 11 works registered, the first place went to “Income-Based Affirmative Action in College Admissions”, by Luiz Brotherhood, João Ramos and Bernard Herskovic; and, in second place, “Household job search and labor supply of secondary wage earners”, by Solange Gonçalves, Naercio Menezes-Filho and Renata Narita.

IMDS will participate in the awards ceremony of the first edition of the Special Youth Session in Brazil, organized by the partner institutions IMDS, IDB and SBE, at the 44th Meeting of the Brazilian Society of Econometrics, to be held on December 7, 2022, in Fortaleza, Ceará, at which time IMDS will also present the highlights of the ongoing institutional research on the youth theme.

The article that won the 1st place deals with the effects of affirmative action policies for admission to higher education based on income over well-being, aggregate product, efficiency and intergenerational correlation of income. The authors investigate whether the efficiency gains generated by income-based affirmative action policies are economically significant and overcome unintended distortions in educational investments. To answer the research questions and highlight the long-term implications of income-based affirmative actions for Brazil, a theoretical model was constructed, calibrated with Brazilian data from the ENEM (National High School Exam) and ENADE (National Student Performance Exam). The results suggest that it is possible to generate efficiency gains with this type of policy.

The article that came in the 2nd place investigates the dynamics of the supply of intra-household labor of secondary family employees – spouse and offspring. The main objective of the study is to verify how the decisions of the mother and the offspring regarding the labor market are interrelated. Among the main questions of the research are: how much of the fall in the labor force participation rate of children is related to the situation of mothers in the labor market, to the income of parents, to shocks in the labor market of young people themselves or even to the cost of investing in the education of their children? What are the impacts of changes in the conditions of mothers in the labor market and on the father’s income on the well-being of their children? The focus of the study is 14-to-24-year-old offspring living with their parents and the model is estimated from IBGE data derived from the Monthly Employment Survey for two periods: 2003 to 2006 and 2010 to 2013 – the first period referring to the beginning of a decade of economic growth in Brazil, with the highest average level of GDP growth, whereas the second is the end of this period of prosperity. The estimated results reinforce the argument of interconnection of job offer decisions among household members.

By encouraging scientific production, the IDB-IMDS-SBE 2022 Award seeks to promote the transfer of knowledge and social technologies from educational and research institutions to public managers and organized civil society. The proposal is to gather efforts of academia to glean knowledge of issues pertinent to the topics addressed and transform knowledge into action.

In addition to recognition in academic circles, winners receive a cash prize.

See here the announcement of the winners. For more information about the award, please visit here.