The quotas law for people with disabilities in Brazil: is it a guarantee of employment?

ABSTRACT

This study aims to evaluate the effects and effectiveness of establishing legal employment quotas for people with disabilities (PwD) in Brazil for the years of 2007 and 2016. By estimating Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) models, we verify that, in 2007, the Law of Quotas did not affect the employment of people with disabilities. However, in 2016, the effects are positive for firms that employ 100 to 500 workers. Regarding the effectiveness of the law, in 2016, the increase in the number of employed workers with disabilities is approximate to the required quota for firms with 100 to 200 employees.

KEYWORDS:

• People with disabilities
• employment
• Brazil
• regression discontinuity design

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C54
• J71
• J78

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2004-2006/2004/decreto/d5296.htm.

2. Firms right below the cutoffs are control units, while firms above or on the cutoff point are treated units.

3. To estimate the regressions, we use optimal bandwidths that minimize the mean squared errors for the fuzzy and sharp RD regressions (Calonico, Cattaneo, and Titiunik 2014).

4. That can be verified in the following equation:

$T_{it}^D={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_1{D}_{it}+{\beta }_0{\tilde{T}}_{it}+{\mu }_{1it}$

5. For further information, see Law no. 8112/90 and Law no. 3298/99.

6. The discontinuity was also verified by firm’s sector; however, they were not presented here due to lack of space.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [CAPES]; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [CNPq].