Letícia Xander Russo

The relationship between health, education and income have been largely investigated in the past few years on literature, however, when we consider Brazilian data mainly, little is known about the relationship among the rate of return and health. The present study is concerned about this question, our aim was investigated the effect of individual health status in the rate of return to education and wages. To measures the health variable we consider the selfreported health and chronic diseases prevalence. This study uses the PNAD 2003 and 2008 databases, being used three different methods. The two first methods consist in Dias, Monteiro and Dias model (2012) and the third method refers to Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. Estimates using Heckman (1979) pointed that individuals with health problem, for both self-reported health and chronic diseases, has showed lower schooling and income. The income differential between individuals that have reported be or not be healthy is explained mainly for the schooling difference among groups. To self-reported health was found a differential in the rate of return to education for all levels, in this way, individuals that reported not be healthy have a lower rate of return when compared to individuals that reported be healthy.