A evolução do bem-estar, pobreza e desigualdade no Brasil ao longo das últimas três décadas - 1960/90

Abstract

The central goal of the study is to evaluate the combined effect on the level of poverty and social welfare of those changes in average income and income inequality which took place in Brazil over the last three decades. Due to the choice of a different methodology the study is able to compute the overall effect on the level of poverty and social welfare of the Brazilian process of inequitable growth without having to specify any particular welfare function, poverty measure or poverty line. The main empirical findings show that despite all the differences among the three decades, they have at least two facts in common: first, inequality increased continuously; second, the changes in poverty and social welfare followed the behavior of growth, improving whenever there was growth and worsening when economic decline occurred. In other words, the impact of increasing inequality was important in mitigating the positive effects of growth, but it was never large enough for reversing them.