Frederico Santos Damasceno

The main goal of this paper is to study the elderly people in the Brazilian work market using the PNAD data from IBGE of 2006, trying to describe and enumerate variables that have an effect upon the choice of the elderly about retiring or not as well as remaining or leaving the work market. To establish the dependence of the effects of these variables on the elderly choice it was used the multinomial logit model, which is, the model based on variables of qualitative answers. The supply of elderly people workforce can be evidenced from the Neoclassic theory of work supply, where the decision to work is taken on the use of individuals maximization, between employment and leisure. This away it analyzes which variables that most influence on the elderly choice to offer workforce, rather than to enjoy retirement. The results suggest that the urban area and gender variables were the most important in defining the elderly condition, followed by the elderly condition in the family, as a spouse or householder variables. The elderly has a bigger possibility of being in the work market, even when they are retired if they live in rural areas, or they are males, not married or a householder. While, the chances of being retired or making a living from another income are better when they live in the cities, or when they are female, married or householders. The other variables, like education, age, race, family income per capita, metropolitan and geographic region were important but not as much as the first ones. As for these variables, it verifies that it is more likely that the elderly remain in the work market, regardless of being retired, when they have low-level school education, when they are "non-white", when they live in the outer metropolitan area and live in the Center West region.  But, regard to the age, as older, the better the chances of making a living only  from the retirement. As a final point, the family income variable was the one with lower minor effect, which means that it had a lower importance in the elderly choosing.