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The Evolution of Regional Income Inequality in Brazil, 1872–2015

In: Time and Space

Author

Listed:
  • Justin R. Bucciferro

    (Colgate University
    Eastern Washington University)

  • Pedro H. G. Ferreira de Souza

    (Department of Social Policy, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada)

Abstract

Regional inequality may hinder national development, which is disconcerting for Brazil as one of the world’s most unequal countries. This chapter compiles new and existing state-level estimates of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Brazil and examines their dispersion over the time period from 1872 to 2015. Spatial inequality followed a cyclical pattern, according to population-weighted coefficients of variation: it declined between 1872 and 1905/1920; reversed to an even higher level by 1940, where it stabilized until 1970; and fell to at least an 80-year low by 2015. These trends were driven by commodity cycles (including coffee, rubber, and soybeans); the supply of labor and capital (with abolition of slavery and mass immigration); reductions in transportation costs (from road and rail-line expansion); domestic and trade policy (entailing import substitution industrialization or neoliberalism); and related processes of self-reinforcing structural change. The early estimates suggest a long-run succession of regional growth and contraction, though with an increasingly pronounced polarization between the North and the South.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin R. Bucciferro & Pedro H. G. Ferreira de Souza, 2020. "The Evolution of Regional Income Inequality in Brazil, 1872–2015," Palgrave Studies in Economic History, in: Daniel A. Tirado-Fabregat & Marc Badia-Miró & Henry Willebald (ed.), Time and Space, chapter 0, pages 131-156, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-030-47553-6_6
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-47553-6_6
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    Cited by:

    1. Lichner, Ivan & Lyócsa, Štefan & Výrostová, Eva, 2022. "Nominal and discretionary household income convergence: The effect of a crisis in a small open economy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 18-31.

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