Inequality In Brazil Research Articles

A time series analysis of household income inequality in Brazil 1977 to 2013

Abstract This paper analyses the evolution of household income inequality in Brazil from 1977 and 2013 using Brazilian National Household Survey data at aggregated and regional levels. Four income shares quantiles are analyzed: Top 1%, Top 10%, Bottom 10% and Bottom 50%. The novelty of our study is to use time series techniques to understand the phenomenon of income inequality within this period. We use Markov-Switching Regime Change Model (Hamilton (1989)) and State Space Unobservable Model (Harvey (1990)) techniques. Both strategies suggest that income concentration periods are related to low growth rates but high inflation rates as opposed to many developed countries (Piketty and Saez (2014)). Results from Markov-switching models suggest a detection of a new regime during first decade of 2000's in poorest quantiles (bottom 10% and 50%) increasing their correspondent income shares. Moreover a regime of low shares started to prevail at the same time for Top 10% whereas for those at the Top 1% had prevailed a concentrated income share regime during eighties and nineties. We argue that Brazilian macroeconomic instability helped to produce a regime of low income shares at the bottom of the distribution. Our results suggest that recent inequality reduction in the shares of top 1% quantile can be seen as a “back to normality” instead of “a new era” whereas significant changes can be seen in other quantiles. State space models results also suggests that macroeconomic of the eighties had a severe effects on Brazilian inequality whereas the dynamics of Top 1% income shares reinforce the return of 70's level considering aggregated data. Last, our estimates unveil important regional differences in many quantiles mainly on the low brackets where poorer regions seem to have persistent income-inequality that take longer to be reduced.

Racial density and the socioeconomic, demographic and health context in Brazilian cities in 2000 and 2010.

Racial density has not yet been explored in studies of racial inequalities in Brazil. Thisstudy identified categories of racial density in Brazilian cities and described the living and health context in these categories in 2000 and 2010, when demographic censuses were conducted. Ecological study which used skin color or race information from the last two censuses to calculate racial density (the ratio of people aggregated to the same racial group) of the Brazilian cities each year. Four categories of racial density (Brown; Mixed-race, predominantly black; White/Caucasian; and Mixed-race, predominantly white). Socioeconomic, demographic and health indicators were described to each category. The categories of racial density captured important inequalities throughout the census and also indicated the continuance of worse living and health conditions in the cities composed by Browns and mixed-race people, predominantly Black; better conditions were indicated in cities where White/Caucasians are predominant. The cities, composed mainly of Browns and mixed-race people, predominantly Black, presented younger age structure, worse human development indexes, greater social vulnerability, income concentration, infant and premature mortality (<65 years) and lower life expectancy in both censuses, as compared to other cities. Similarly to other countries, the racial density reflected inequalities in the Brazilian living and health context as well as a time lag among the cities. The categories of racial density may contribute to social epidemiology and race relations studies in Brazil.

HOW EMPLOYMENT SHAPES INCOME INEQUALITY: A COMPARISON BETWEEN BRAZIL AND THE U.S.

ABSTRACT In this study, we analyze the relationship between the development of occupational structure and income inequality in Brazil and the U.S. While both Brazil and the U.S. face high levels of inequality, low socioeconomic development in Brazil notably reduces the proportion of total income that accrues in the bottom two quintiles of the income distribution. In the U.S., inequality is mostly due to unobserved differences within occupations and has grown in large part because of higher earnings among high-skilled workers. Our results highlight that the effects of occupational structure are generally more pronounced at lower levels of economic development. At the higher level of economic development found in the U.S., inequality appears to increase largely due to rising inequality among high-skilled employees, which may be a function of unobserved organizational variables such as firm productivity and market advantage.

Confronting health inequalities: impasses and dilemmas in the regionalization process in Brazil.

The article aims to describe the renewed role of regional policies in territorial reconfigurations in the recent and predominantly neoliberal phase of globalization. It further aims to identify some of the impasses that such transformations produce with their multiple scales and dimensions for strengthening public policies focused on confronting health inequalities in Brazil. The article's discussion begins with a brief review of the characteristics of current territorial reconfigurations in a world in constant transformation, but oriented by neoliberal policy in its multiple dimensions. The article then discusses the changes in local management formats in developed countries. The authors go on to analyze territorial changes in Brazil in recent years, after which the debate addresses the reform agenda in health regionalization and the political cycles in the organization of the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS). Finally, the article systematizes some of the impasses in regionalization policy, based on recent studies in which the unit of analysis was Brazilian health regions in the country's different major geographic regions. The issues identified in the article, also emphasized in the specialized literature, show that the region/networks dyad has not been fully strengthened during the regionalization process in Brazil. A key task for the public policy of regionalization of health in Brazil should be to continue to push forward with the reform agenda in order to mobilize the territory's diversity and the directive coordination of strategic national policy.

DA LUTA POR DIREITOS AO EMPODERAMENTO FEMININO: OS ENTRAVES PARA O COMBATE À DESIGUALDADE DE GÊNERO NO BRASIL

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar uma discussão sobre direitos das mulheres e empoderamento feminino, refletindo sobre os entraves para o combate à desigualdade de gênero na sociedade brasileira. Embora os avanços em relação à conquistas de direitos por parte das mulheres sejam importantes, este trabalho salienta que em contextos de avanço do pensamento conservador e a dificuldade em desmontar determinados elementos típicos da cultura e dos comportamentos discriminatórios e patriarcais, são entraves que promovem a morosidade do combate à desigualdade de gênero no Brasil. Teoricamente, o estudo baseia-se nas autoras feministas Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Heleieth Saffioti, Srilatha Batliwala, entre outras. Do ponto de vista metodológico, este trabalho alicerçou-se em pesquisa bibliográfica, exploratória e documental, a partir de dados estatísticos e relatórios da ONU, PNUD e CNJ.

Unsafe abortion: a patriarchal and racialized picture of women’s poverty

Abstract This article aims to analyze how the reality of criminalized abortion reinforces inequalities of gender, race/ethnicity, and class, which are co-produced within the context of sexage, understood here as the appropriation of women by men, reducing them to the status of thing. The bibliographic and documentary research was carried out, from the perspective of materialistic, historical and dialectical analysis. The main conclusion is that criminalization reinforces the logic of social inequalities in Brazil and the world. This is because poor and black women are the most affected, those who die the most, and because almost all unsafe abortions in the world occur in the peripheric economies. Thus, the consequences of criminalized abortion, whether moral, health or economic, mainly impact poor, black, young women living in peripheral economies.

Liver transplants and organ allocation in Brazil: from Rawls to utilitarianism

The process of liver donations and transplants in Brazil reveals major inequalities between regions and states of the country, ranging from uptake of the organs to their transplantation. In 2006, the MELD score (Model for End-stage Liver Disease), inspired by the U.S. model and based on the principle of need, was introduced in Brazil for liver transplant allocation. However, Brazil's inequalities have partially undermined the initiative's success. Other countries have already benefited from growing discussion on the benefits of models that seek to harmonize utilitarianism and need. The current article reviews the relevant literature with a special focus on the Brazilian reality.

브라질의 인종과 불평등 : 사회적 자본으로서의 백인성

브라질의 인종과 불평등 : 사회적 자본으로서의 백인성

Megaprojects, epistemological violence and environmental conflicts in Brazil

Characterized as ‘social effects of large projects’, it is common across multiple national contexts that involuntary displacement and forced resettlement are dealt with by means of a managerial perspective within the ecological modernization paradigm. I understand this approach as a type of epistemological violence that acts to dismiss other forms of perceiving and being in the world. It imposes a standardization of the social fabric as conditions to make subjects legible and governable. Through the lens of epistemological violence, I focus on the logic that justifies space interventions in relation to the consequences on the ground that perpetuate environmental inequalities in Brazil. Ideas such as sustainable development have produced a colonizing effect when associated to specific processes on the ground. The analyses calls attention to the invisibility of peasants lives and knowledge systems under the licensing process of hydroelectric power plants, and how epistemological violence results in physical violence via displacement in situ

El golpe en Brasil como construcción de la "democracia" de la subciudadanía

The article deals with the relationship between the fragility of the construction of the nation-state, the weakness of democracy in Brazil and its consequences in the constraint of citizenship, restricted to the concrete exercise of few people, which establishes predominantly coercive relations of the state apparatus with the popular majorities. This explains the rising up of the recurrent appeal for coups d'etat in national history, such as the one that occurred in 2016 with the illegitimate removal of President Dilma Rousseff. It also examines the discursive foundations that seek to legitimize the deep class inequalities in Brazil, and the role they play in establishing a structural dualism, even within the juridical normativity and its validation. It identifies particularly in the native bourgeoisie, a minor partner of imperialism, aspects of the state that obstruct the revitalizing of civil society, stopping the expansion of the internal market and power circles, which ends up leading to the atavistic persistence of authoritarianism in Brazil.

The interplay of contextual layers: A multilevel analysis of income distribution, neighborhood infrastructure, socioeconomic position and self-rated health in Brazil

Our hypothesis is that neighborhood infrastructure modifies the association between state-level income distribution and self-rated health. In our findings neighborhood infrastructure amplifies the association between income equality and self-rated health, yet with a differential impact on health according to sex, race and education level favoring individuals at higher socioeconomic positions. Most of the individual health variation attributed to context happens at neighborhood level, based on random effects analyses. Our findings contribute to a further understanding of health inequalities in Brazil. The demonstrated synergism between state, neighborhood and individual level determinants of health supports inter-sectoral policies and interventions in a clearly multileveled way.

Hegemonic media and inequality in Brazil

In Brazil, the traditional media crisis coincides with the historical moment of weakening political liberalism and the transit of the rational idea of the people in favor of a still obscure mass of population, redefined and fixed by the expanded market. There is a general perception that the forms of representation or framing of the social–political field, dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, cease to be operative in understanding and evaluating socially significant events. In the old place of argumentative rhetoric, the database files come in. The obliteration of the receptive pole in favor of the emission opens the way for the autonomization of the algorithm, that is, for the artificial intelligence to control the entire interlocutory process. On the other hand, the crisis of traditional forms does not imply the disappearance of journalism, which remains virtually a space, to be occupied in the recreation of new forms of mediation politically significant for civil society, even taking into account that the great constitutive principles Of modernity (social contract, democracy, citizenship, state, nation, individual identity) are no longer in tune with the social synthesis operated by the new socioeconomic order. Thus, journalism as a modern phenomenon can be redefined by the market and technology. And professional journalists is just one of several categories of actors mobilized to determine the facts and turn them into media event. In this context, a new, more segmented fact-finding power emerges, as well as a new kind of relationship between the public and the knowledge of reality. The so-called “social” networks are the most palpable example of this new state of affairs, fueling speculation about the modeling of this new type of journalism.

Earnings Inequality and the Minimum Wage: Evidence from Brazil

We show that a rise in the minimum wage accounts for a large decline in earnings inequality in Brazil since 1994. To this end, we combine rich administrative and survey data with an equilibrium model of the Brazilian labor market. Our results imply that the minimum wage has far-reaching spillover effects on wages higher up in the distribution, accounting for one-third of the 25.9 log point fall in the variance of log earnings in Brazil since 1994. At the same time, the minimum wage’s effects on employment and output are muted by reallocation of workers toward more productive firms. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Social class inequalities and international student mobility: the case of Brazilian students in the Portuguese higher education system

Brazil experienced since the end of the 20th century an important transformation in its education system. This process included the development and expansion of its higher education system as well as internationalization through investment in the international mobility of Brazilian students. This is in line with global trends on the internationalization of higher education. However, Brazil is also among the countries with higher inequalities. Both migration and education are shaped by social class inequalities however, little is actually known about the influence of class belonging in patterns of international student mobility. Focusing on the case of Brazilian higher education students in Portugal – one of their main destinations – this article examines the role of social class inequalities in international student mobility. Drawing on data collected through interviews with higher education representatives in Portugal and a survey and interviews with Brazilian students in Portugal, we are able to identify how the context of inequalities in Brazil contributes to shape both higher education trajectories (namely in the distinctions between attending private or state institutions) as well as the process and experience of international mobility in Portugal. Very importantly, we highlight the role of the political context in Brazil, including the phase of strong public investment in the fields of higher education and international student mobility and hint some changes following the impeachment of former president Dilma Roussef.

III Plano Nacional de Políticas para as Mulheres: A transversalidade de gênero e a educação

O presente artigo tem como objetivo compreender como, do ponto de vista das ênfases, tensões e desafios, a proposição governamental da transversalidade de gênero tem sido apresentada pelo Capítulo 1 do III Plano Nacional de Políticas para as Mulheres (2013-2015). Para tanto, realizou-se uma análise cultural e documental. Os resultados indicam que a transversalidade de gênero tem sido proposta como um princípio orientador deste Plano. Apresenta-se, de modo particular no Capítulo 1, na forma de um construto teórico, pautada no conceito da autonomia econômica; e como um construto prático, com ações voltadas para a educação de mulheres pobres. Eis a economização do social como proposta para operar com a transversalidade de gênero, desenvolver a autonomia econômica das mulheres e reduzir as desigualdades de gênero.

Reducing Health Inequalities in Brazil’s Universal Health-Care System: Accountability Politics in São Paulo

Brazil relies on the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), a public health-care system used by nearly 65 per cent of the population. This article analyses the role played by accountability mechanisms in expanding access to primary health care in the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. Two accountability mechanisms are described and discussed: political competition and outsourcing. The article shows that from 2001 to 2016 the supply of primary care grew and the disparities in access to public health services decreased across the city areas with both the best and worst indices of income, education, and health. These distributive results are striking given how difficult it is to reverse inequalities, as attested by the findings of a number of studies in different parts of the world which indicate that the richest populations tend to persistently benefit more than the poorest from public spending on health.

Expressões da desigualdade racial na política de previdência social: uma análise a partir do acesso a direitos previdenciários no município de Rolândia-PR

O artigo apresenta resultados de pesquisa sobre o acesso da população negra aos direitos viabilizados pela política de previdência, no município de Rolândia-PR. Objetiva evidenciar que dificuldades nesse acesso revelam uma das expressões da desigualdade racial no Brasil: a dificuldade de acesso aos direitos sociais viabilizados pela política de previdência, e que essa dificuldade é maior entre a população negra do que entre a população branca. Foi construído através de análise bibliográfica, análise documental e de dados sobre a demanda apresentada por homens e mulheres que procuraram agência do Instituto Nacional de Previdência Social (INSS), do município de Rolândia (PR). Esses dados foram colhidos através de formulários elaborados pelas pesquisadoras e preenchidos por sujeitos informantes, profissionais que trabalham nessa agência. Conclui-se que entre os trabalhadores negros registram-se maiores percentuais de informalidade e precarização de trabalho do que os que se observam entre os trabalhadores brancos; fato que se expressa em maiores índices de exclusão dos negros do excesso aos benefícios vinculados a uma política contributiva.

Same, same but different? Women’s experiences with gender inequality in Brazil

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine gender issues in Brazil from the perceptions, experiences, and discourses of professional women in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on 26 in-depth interviews with female professionals. The methodology consists of an exploratory approach through content analysis.FindingsDespite the fact that Brazil demonstrates an idealized national ethos that promotes equality, gender roles are still very traditional. Participants recognized gender issues at work, including covert discrimination, though most did not acknowledge experiencing them personally.Originality/valueThere is dissonance between global trends and the actual experience of female professionals in Brazil. Although participants rejected the idea of personally experiencing inequality, they acknowledge its existence in human resources (HR) practices. This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy where gender inequality is perpetuated and organizations and HR departments do not seem to have a proactive role as change agents.

Human Development and Social Support for State Authority in Brazil

Several studies have observed a syndrome of shifting values within different cultures over the past five decades. This work investigates whether these cultural changes have been followed by changes in individual attitudes regarding state authority in Brazil. Using data from the World Values Survey, we tested the hypotheses proposed by Ronald Inglehart that the increasing prevalence of self-expression and secular-rational values has been followed by an increasing societal emphasis on civic autonomy over state authority. The results do not provide evidence to support this hypothesis for Brazil. Instead, the study shows a stable pattern of support for state authority in the past three decades despite the increasing level of self-expression values. The study suggests that these attitudes are related to long-lasting characteristics of the political culture and public expectations regarding the role of the state in reducing social inequality in Brazil.

REFLEXÕES SOBRE ARBORIZAÇÃO URBANA: DESAFIOS A SEREM SUPERADOS PARA O INCREMENTO DA ARBORIZAÇÃO URBANA NO BRASIL

Ao propor uma reflexão sobre a arborização urbana no Brasil, o presente artigo pretende, por meio de uma análise histórica e atual, compreender quais os reais desafios a serem superados para valorização e incremento da arborização urbana no Brasil. Dentre os elementos atuantes na desvalorização da arborização urbana no Brasil, o presente artigo aponta o modelo de urbanização inspirado pela colonização portuguesa, bem como a falta de conhecimento sobre os benefícios que a arborização representa para a qualidade ambiental urbana. Ainda, o artigo aponta que a falta de infraestrutura urbana para a população mais pobre atua como um intensificador da desigualdade social no Brasil. Da mesma forma, a falta de estrutura e corpo técnico especializado em muitas prefeituras dificultam as ações de fiscalização, fazendo com que as leis referentes à arborização urbana não sejam de fato aplicadas.