Spatial distribution of occupational accident risk in the casual labor market, Piracicaba, Southeast Brazil

Abstract

Casual employment or informal work has increased in recent years, not only in developing but also in industrialized nations. One characteristic of this sector of the economy is the large spatial mobility of these workers while executing their activities when compared with their colleagues in the formal employment sector.The objective of this study is to estimate the spatial distribution of work accident risk in the informal work market in the urban zone of an industrialized city in Southeast Brazil and to examine concomitant effects of age, gender, type of occupation and years of schooling after controlling for spatial risk variation. The basic methodology adopted is that of a population based case-control study with particular interest focussed on the spatial location of work. Cases are casual workers in the city suffering work accidents during a one year period, controls are selected from the source population of casual labourers. The spatial distribution of work accidents is estimated via a semi-parametric generalized additive model with a non parametric bidimensional spline of the geographical coordinates of cases and controls as the non-linear spatial component, and including age, gender, occupation and years of schooling as linear predictive variables in the parametric component. (AU)