IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa11p659.html

Measuring the Contribution of Social Policies to Regional Inequality Dynamic in Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Raul Silveira Neto

  • Carlos Azzoni

Abstract

We decompose the recent changes in regional inequality in Brazil into its components, highlighting the role of spatially blind social programs. We aggregate personal income micro data to the state level, differentiating 9 income sources, and assess the role of these components in the observed changes in regional inequality indicators. The main results indicate that the largest part of the recent reduction in regional inequality in Brazil is related to the dynamics in the market-related labor income, with manufacturing and services favoring inequality reduction. Labor income in agriculture, retirement and pensions, and property rents and other sources favored concentration. The social programs Bolsa Família and Benefícios de Prestação Continuada are responsible for more than 24% of the reduction in inequality, although they account for less than 1.7% of the disposable household income. Such positive impact on regional concentration is impressive, since the goals of the programs are clearly non-spatial.

Suggested Citation

  • Raul Silveira Neto & Carlos Azzoni, 2011. "Measuring the Contribution of Social Policies to Regional Inequality Dynamic in Brazil," ERSA conference papers ersa11p659, European Regional Science Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p659
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa11/e110830aFinal00659.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hewings, Geoffrey J.D. & Azzoni, Carlos Roberto & Guilhoto, Joaquim José Martins & Haddad, Eduardo A. & Laes, M. A. & Moreira, Guilherme Renato Caldo, 2007. "Social policies, personal and regional income inequality in Brazil: an I-O analysis of the "Bolsa Família" program," MPRA Paper 54508, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Azzoni, Carlos Roberto & Guilhoto, Joaquim José Martins, 2009. "Social policies, personal and regional income inequality in Brazil: an I-O analysis," MPRA Paper 54498, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Carlos R. Azzoni, 2001. "Economic growth and regional income inequality in Brazil," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 35(1), pages 133-152.
    4. Raul Silveira Neto & Carlos Azzoni, 2011. "Non-Spatial Government Policies and Regional Income Inequality in Brazil," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(4), pages 453-461.
    5. Lerman, Robert I & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1985. "Income Inequality Effects by Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 151-156, February.
    6. Christopher Candelaria & Mary C. Daly & Galina Hale, 2009. "Beyond Kuznets: persistent regional inequality in China," Working Paper Series 2009-07, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Porras, Laila, 2015. "Croissance, inégalités et pauvreté au sein des pays émergents : le cas des BRICS," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 18.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raul M. Silveira-Neto & Carlos R. Azzoni, 2012. "Social Policy As Regional Policy: Market And Nonmarket Factors Determining Regional Inequality," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 433-450, August.
    2. Tatiane Menezes & R. Silveira-Neto & Carlos Azzoni, 2012. "Demography and evolution of regional inequality," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 49(3), pages 643-655, December.
    3. Julie A. Silva, 2013. "Rural Income Inequality in Mozambique: National Dynamics and Local Experiences?," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 43(1), pages 23-50, Summer.
    4. Rodrigo C. Oliveira & Raul Da Mota Silveira Net, 2014. "Escolaridade E Políticas De Transferência De Renda Como Condicionantes Da Dinâmica Da Desigualdade Regional De Renda No Brasil: Uma Análise Para O Período 1995-2011," Anais do XLI Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 41st Brazilian Economics Meeting] 174, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    5. Eduardo A. Haddad & Jesús P. Mena-Chalco, Otavio J. G. Sidone, 2015. "Scholarly Collaboration in Regional Science in Developing Countries: The Case of the Brazilian REAL Network," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2015_12, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    6. Gabriel Lyrio Oliveira & Andre Luis Squarize Chagas, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Children: The Brazilian Case," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2020_16, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    7. Domenica Panzera & Paolo Postiglione, 2020. "Measuring the Spatial Dimension of Regional Inequality: An Approach Based on the Gini Correlation Measure," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 379-394, April.
    8. Raul da Mota Silveira Neto & Rozane Bezerra de Siqueira & Carlos Henrique de Sousa Candido & José Ricardo Nogueira, 2024. "Spatially blind but regionally progressive? Effects of a universal basic income on regional welfare inequality in Brazil," Revista Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos, Associação Brasileira de Estudos Regionais e Urbanos (ABER), vol. 18(1), pages 1-23.
    9. Raul da Mota Silveira-Neto & Carlos Roberto Azzoni, 2012. "Social Programs, Industrial Deconcentration and the Recent Decrease in Regional Income Inequality in Brazil," Chapters, in: Werner Baer (ed.), The Regional Impact of National Policies, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Francesca Gastaldi & Paolo Liberati & Elena Pisano & Simone Tedeschi, 2014. "Progressivity-Improving VAT Reforms in Italy," Working papers 6, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    11. Michele Giammatteo, 2006. "Inequality in Transition Countries: The Contributions of Markets and Government Taxes and Transfers," LIS Working papers 443, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    12. Stéphane Mussard & Kuan Xu, 2006. "Multidimensional Decomposition of the Sen Index: Some Further Thoughts," Cahiers de recherche 06-08, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    13. Olivier Bargain & Tim Callan, 2010. "Analysing the effects of tax-benefit reforms on income distribution: a decomposition approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(1), pages 1-21, March.
    14. Duro, Juan Antonio & Ramirez, Noemí & Wieland, Hanspeter & Wiedenhofer, Dominik & Haberl, Helmut, 2025. "Global inequalities in countries' demand for raw materials: Twenty years of expansion and insufficient convergence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    15. Antonio Abatemarco & Massimo Aria & Sergio Beraldo & Michela Collaro, 2023. "Measuring Access and Inequality of Access to Health Care: a Policy-Oriented Decomposition," CSEF Working Papers 666, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    16. Thomas Dohmen & Hartmut F. Lehmann & Mark E. Schaffer, 2014. "Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data, 1997 to 2002," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 504-531, April.
    17. Yves Flückiger & Jacques Silber, 1995. "Income Inequality Decomposition by Income Source and the Breakdown of Inequality Differences Between Two Population Subgroups," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 131(4), pages 599-615, December.
    18. Evânio M. Paulo & Osmar T. Souza, 2023. "Foreign Trade and Income Convergence in Latin America," Economies, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-19, September.
    19. Taylor, J. Edward, 1992. "Remittances and inequality reconsidered: Direct, indirect, and intertemporal effects," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 187-208, April.
    20. Bart Capéau & André Decoster & Bram De Rock & Jonas Vanderkelen, 2024. "Did Belgium withstand the storm of rising inequalities? Income inequality in Belgium, 1985–2020," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(3), pages 285-308, September.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p659. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.