Brazilian Perspectives: Society, Stratification and Income Distribution

Authors

  • Ivonaldo Leite Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24203/ajas.v8i1.6050

Abstract

This paper aims to present a general evaluation on the inequality, income distribution and social mobility in Brazil between 2002 and 2014, under the governments of the Workers' Party. In this way, from the methodological point view, it is based on both a review of the literature about that subject and an investigation of the primary sources of the Brazilian social policies. Among the results found out, it can be highlighting the following sample: 1) historically, Brazilian society has been marked by inequality in several ways, and this is probably a consequence of his colonial legacy; 2) In the period between 2002 and 2014, Brazilian social inequality declined; 3) the decline of inequality can be explained by income growth, higher schooling levels and labor formalization, but the targeted social program, Bolsa Família, also contributed to income convergence; 4) Brazil slashed poverty from 25 percent of the population in 2004 to 8.5 percent in 2014, and extreme poverty declined from 12 to 4 percent over the same period. Conclusively, it’s affirmed, for example, that the reduction of inequality in Brazil was the result of firm political decisions, as well as of the quality in management and implementation of the public policies by the technical teams.

References

• Araújo, A. A. de. (2012). “Access to Higher Education in Brazil with Reference to Prouniâ€, in Higher Education Studies, Toronto, v. 2, n. 1, pp. 32-37.

• Barro, J.; Lee, J.-W. (2010). “A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950-2010â€, in Working Papers Series - National Bureau of Economic Research NBER Working Paper, 15902, Cambridge, MA, https://www.nber.org/papers/w15902 (accessed March 5, 2019).

• Bourguignon, F., F. H. G. Ferreira, and M. Menendez (2007). ‘‘Inequality of Opportunity in Brazil’’, in Review of Income and Wealth 53, no. 4, pp. 585–618.

• Campello, T. (2015). “The end to extreme poverty is just beginningâ€, in Tereza Campello, Tiago Falcão and Ana Patrícia Vieira da Costa (eds.), Brazil without poverty. Brasília: MDS.

• Cogneau, D.; Gignoux, J. (2008). “Earnings inequality and educational mobility in Brazil over two decadesâ€, in Stephan Klasen and Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann (eds.), Poverty, inequality, and policy in Latin America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp. 47-84.

• Gethin, M.; Morgan C. (2018). “Brazil divided: hindsights on the growing politicisation of inequalityâ€, in World Inequality Lab, 3, https://wid.world/document/divided-brazil-hindsights-on-the-growing-politicization-of-inequality-wid-world-issue-brief-2018-3/ (accessed March 6, 2019).

• Góes, C.; Karpowicz, I (2017). Inequality in Brazil: A regional perspective, in IMF Working Papers,17/225, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321791159_Inequality_in_Brazil_A_Regional_Perspective ( accessed March 4, 2019).

• Goldthorpe, J. H. (2005). “Progress in sociology: The case of social mobility researchâ€, in Stefan Svallfors (ed.), Analyzing inequality: Life chances and social mobility in comparative perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, pp. 56-82.

• IBGE (2014). Pesquisa nacional por amostra de domicílios: síntese de indicadores. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.

• Keynes, J. M. (1963). Essays in persuasion. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

• Keller, Y. (2012). Inequality and economic growth in Brazil, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2012 (Bachelor Thesis).

• Kinloch, G. C. (1987). Social stratification: an annotated bibliography. New York: Garland.

• Medeiros, M. (2016) “Income inequality in Brazil: new evidence from combined tax and survey dataâ€, in World Social Science Report, 2016. Paris: UNESCO.

• Ministry of Social Development (2015). Brazil without poverty. Brasília: Ministry of Social Development. Brasília: MDS, 2015.

• Pareto, V. (1968) [1901]. The rise and fall of the elites: An application of theoretical sociology. New Jersey: The Bedminister Press.

• Smith, R. E (2008). “The past, present, and future of income distribution in Brazil, 1960-2007â€, in IX Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), New Orleans, Louisiana, March 27-30, 2008, http://www.brasa.org/wordpress/Documents/BRASA_IX/Russell-Smith.pdf (accessed March 5, 2019).

• Van de Gaer, D. (1993). Equality of opportunity and investment in human capital, Catholic University of Leuven, Faculty of Economics, Leuven (PhD Thesis).

• Veblen, T. (2007) [1899]. The theory of the leisure class. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Downloads

Published

2020-02-15

How to Cite

Leite, I. (2020). Brazilian Perspectives: Society, Stratification and Income Distribution. Asian Journal of Applied Sciences, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.24203/ajas.v8i1.6050