Income Inequality and Social Well-Being

2008

This thesis is a collection of three essays on poverty, inequality and well-being for Brazil. The first chapter aims at understanding the key determinants of the Brazilian inequality. this chapter firstly sketches a poverty and inequality analysis for Brazil and then investigates the main determinants of inequality, particularly racial and geographical differences, by applying several decomposition techniques. the second chapter investigates Brazilian poverty by exploiting geographical differences and questions whether the standard approach in measuring poverty is informative enough taking into consideration that the population is clearly heterogeneous. The first two chapters of this work apply techniques able to measure and decompose both poverty and inequality within the context of the standard monetary approach. The purpose of the last chapter is to enlarge the perspective of our analysis by adopting the capability approach. hence the third chapter aims to model and estimate the ...

2008

Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The paper analyses the causes of this inequality in terms of Brazil's development process, which has traditionally 'managed poverty' without making efforts to promote change in the socioeconomic order: what the author terms 'conservative modernisation'. Accordingly, universal education and social security were not prioritised, and urban segregation, rural exclusion, and regressive taxation were reinforced. Since 2001, levels of inequality and extreme poverty in Brazil have fallen, the result of various socioeconomic factors. The paper particularly notes the positive impact of policies supporting wealth redistribution, such as increases in the minimum wage, expansion in social security coverage, and support for small-scale agriculture. Yet, a stubborn concentration of income, wealth, and assets amongst a minority remains. The author concludes that further progress will require radical urban, land, and fiscal reforms, along with greater political efforts to combat gender and racial discrimination. This background paper was written as a contribution to the development of From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World, Oxfam International 2008. It is published in order to share widely the results of commissioned research and programme experience. The views it expresses are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Oxfam International or its affiliate organisations.

Country Studies, 2004

printed on recycled paper 1 2 3 4 06 05 04 World Bank Country Studies are among the many reports originally prepared for internal use as part of the continuing analysis by the Bank of the economic and related conditions of its developing member countries and to facilitate its dialogues with the governments. Some of the reports are published in this series with the least possible delay for the use of governments, and the academic, business, financial, and development communities. The manuscript of this paper therefore has not been prepared in accordance with the procedures appropriate to formally-edited texts. Some sources cited in this paper may be informal documents that are not readily available. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply on the part of the World Bank any judgment of the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. The material in this publication is copyrighted. The World Bank encourages dissemination of its work and normally will grant permission for use.

Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2008

2005

This chapter is motivated by the fact that the Brazilian economy has one of the highest income inequality index in the world. According to Paes de Barros et al(2000), average income of the 10% richest people in Brazil is 28 times higher than the average income of the 40% poorest people. In Argentina, it is 10 times, 13 times in

2006

Brazil is well-know for its very high level of inequality. Understanding the key determinants of this inequality is the principal aim of this study. In order to reach this purpose, the present work firstly sketches a poverty, inequality and welfare profile for Brazil and then investigates the main determinants of inequality by applying several decomposition techniques by using the annual Brazilian household survey for 2002. Numerous techniques are developed, split into two approaches: inequality decomposition by indexes and regression-based inequality decomposition. Using the first methodology, a decomposable class of inequality measures is analysed by considering households characteristics such as geographic location, gender, age and ethnicity. For regressionbased decomposition analysis, due to the large number of such methodologies, the present work limits the analysis to only a few of them. Field’s decomposition estimates the factor shares that mainly contribute to determine inco...

IMF Working Papers, 2017

In this study, we document the decline in income inequality and a convergence in consumption patterns in Brazilian states in a new database constructed from micro data from the national households' survey. We adjust the state-Gini coefficients for spatial price differences using information on households' rental prices available in the survey. In a panel regression framework, we find that labor income growth, formalization, and schooling contributed to the decline in inequality during 2004-14, but redistributive policies, such as Bolsa Família, have also played a positive role. Going forward, it will be important to phase out untargeted subsidies, such as public spending on tertiary education, and contain growth of public sector wages, to improve budgetary efficiency and protect gains in equality.

This paper investigates the relationship between household income inequality and economic growth in Brazil controlling for a large number explanatory variables, which were divided into three groups: individuals' inherent characteristics, individuals' acquired characteristics and a set of characteristics related to the economic environment of the country. Using the household income concept to urban areas only, the methodological econometric framework was based upon simultaneous equation models applied in cross-sectional data for brazilian states with some extensions to different income percentiles. The results corroborate with some studies, but contradict several others, concerning labor market segmentation, discrimination and access to education and their impacts over inequality, but shows relevant effects about government intervention. It is also found that some of those particular variables affect in different ways the income inequality in each income percentile.

GEORGES, RAFAEL, 2017

We need to talk about inequalities. The world’s eight richest people own the same wealth as the poorest half of the population. At the same time, more than 700 mil- lion people live on less than US$ 1.90 a day. The situation is even worse in Brazil: just six people have as much money as the 100 million poorest Brazilians. And that’s not all: the richest 5% earn the same income as the other 95%. In Brazil, it would take 19 years for a worker earning a minimum wage to get what a super-rich earns in just one month. In such context of extreme inequality Oxfam Brasil is launching its report “Inequalities in Brazil: the Divide that Unites Us.” The purpose of the publication is to spark a necessary and urgent public debate on reducing in- equalities in Brazilian society with the aim of building a fairer country.

Review of Development Economics, 2019

Latin America, which is a region known for its high and persistent income inequality levels, experienced a significant decline in income inequality since the second half of the 1990s. Brazil is a particularly interesting case in Latin America. While the country presented notable economic growth and improvements in income distribution in the early 2000s, Brazil continues to experience high levels of income inequality in comparison with other Latin American or advanced economies. This research contributes to the literature by examining the key drivers of income distribution and the degree of persistence of income inequality among Brazilian states. This research also improves upon previous works by using more recent and comprehensive data and addressing concerns regarding heterogeneity and endogeneity by using the system GMM estimation method. Our findings show that income inequality is highly persistent across Brazilian states and that government policies including income transfer programs made important contributions to reduce income inequality in Brazil. This study also shows that the decline in labor income ratios between different ethnic groups and the increase of the share of formal jobs in the labor market contributed to reduce income inequality.