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The Distribution of Household Income in Brazil: Unequal and Immutable?

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  • Sotomayor, Orlando

Abstract

Summary After a period of rapid growth in the 1970s, a macroeconomically turbulent decade of the 1980s, the achievement of price stability during the 1990s, and an impressive expansion of educational opportunities, long term trends do not show an unambiguous increase or decline in Brazilian household income inequality. However, behind the apparently invariable state of affairs one finds a marked decline in the proportion of households with incomes below 1.5 times the poverty line. The use of a semi-parametric procedure for constructing counterfactual income densities establishes that while advances in education were almost wholly associated with growth in absolute incomes, they had little impact on their dispersion.

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  • Sotomayor, Orlando, 2008. "The Distribution of Household Income in Brazil: Unequal and Immutable?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1280-1293, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:36:y:2008:i:7:p:1280-1293
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    1. Sotomayor, Orlando J., 2009. "Changes in the Distribution of Household Income in Brazil: The Role of Male and Female Earnings," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 1706-1715, October.
    2. Andrade, Daniel Caixeta & Garcia, Junior Ruiz, 2015. "Estimating the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) for Brazil from 1970 to 2010," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 49-56.
    3. Sotomayor, Orlando J., 2021. "Can the minimum wage reduce poverty and inequality in the developing world? Evidence from Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).

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