Error on Brazilian income variables in 1980

INTERNATIONAL
1

Hello. I believe I have spotted some mistakes regarding the description and coding of the Brazilian income variables in 1980.

First, regarding br1980a_earnprod. It corresponds to the monetary value of in kind payments from main occupation and is not taken into account into the computation of inctot and incearn.

Second, regading br1980a_incother. It corresponds to earnings from secondary occupation(s). Its universe is said to concern “Persons age 10+ who worked a secondary occupation during the week prior to the census ”. The “during the week prior to the census” part is wrong: the question concerns all people regularly exercising a secondary occupation in the census year.

Third, br1980a_otherinc is described as “Other income received”. It should be more accurately described as “Other capital income received”.

Fourth, inctot is also top-coded in 1980 (though this concerns only one observation) and this should be mentionned on the variable description page.

To this regard, I find it weird inctot to be a 7-digit variable and incearn an 8-digit variable since inctot is mechanically larger than incearn.

Fifth, incearn coded as zero as soon as br1980a_incother is coded as zero (which explains why incearn has so many zeros).

I hope this helps!

Best,

Geoffrey

2

Just one precisision regarding the first point:

br1980a_earnprod should be included in the computation of inctot and incearn but counted as zero when it is the only source of remuneration in the job (ie. when br1980a_grossinc and br1980a_incother are zero) for maximum comparibility with the other Brazilian censuses.

3

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The IPUMS-I team will address the documentation issues you identified soon.
IPUMS-International is also looking into the treatment of br1980a_earnprod in relation to international standards for calculation earned income. Most importantly, the documentation regarding this variable in Brazil 1980 will be explicit about its availability and relation to the integrated INCEARN variable.
Thank you again!