Social Inequality In Brazil Research Articles

The Burden of Social Phobia in a Brazilian Community and its Relationship with Socioeconomic Circumstances, Health Status and Use of Health Services: The Bambui Study

Social phobia in the environment of poverty and major social inequalities, as observed in most developing countries, has received little attention. This population-based study was carried out in a poor community in Brazil (15,000 inhabitants), aiming at determining the prevalence of social phobia and its associated factors. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview was applied in a random sample of 1037 residents aged > or = 18 years. The 1-month, 1-year and lifetime prevalence of social phobia were 7.9, 9.1 and 11.8%, respectively. One-month social phobia was independently associated with age (45-64 years), marital status (divorced/separated), worse socioeconomic indicators (family income and education), number of months worked, worse health status and use of health services and medications. There was an important burden of social phobia in the study community, due to its high prevalence (similar or superior to those observed in most developed countries), and due to its association with worse health status and use of health services and medications. The strong association between social phobia and socioeconomic circumstance, even in a small and poor community, is certainly a reflex of the major social inequalities in Brazil.

Criminality and Social Inequality in Brazil

This study aims at shedding light the question on the criminality in Brazil. Previous analyses have concentrated on the impact of social factors, as for instance inequality, on criminality, nevertheless without making explicit the mechanism by which this variable works. The main hypothesis here is that the agent has a targeted consumption pattern given by average social standards. The non-satisfied consumption creates dissatisfaction, thus making the agent vulnerable to criminal activities. Using Becker's analysis (1968) in the intertemporal maximizing framework, this study shows that the required income to do not undertake illicit activities grows up in a proportional way to the degree of dissatisfaction. Following the methodological approach, it is tested the influence of social inequality on criminality rates for a sample of Brazilian states during the period 1987-1995 using panel data approach. The use of this method allows estimators capable of taking into account the existing heterogeneity among states. The main result that emerges is that social inequality given by the Gini coefficient has a positive impact on criminality rates.

Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in Brazil, 1914-1940.

Susan K. Besse broadens our understanding of the political by establishing the relevance of gender for the construction of state hegemony in Brazil after World War I. Restructuring Patriarchy demonstrates that the consolidation and legitimization of power by President Getulio Vargas's Estado Novo depended to a large extent on the reorganization of social relations in the private sphere. New expectations and patterns of behavior for women emerged in postwar Brazil from heated debates between men and women, housewives and career women, feminists and antifeminists, reformist professionals and conservative clerics, and industrialists and bureaucrats. But as urban middle- and upper-class women challenged patriarchal authority at home and assumed new roles in public, prominent intellectuals, professionals, and politicians defined and imposed new 'hygienic,' rational, and scientific gender norms. Thus, modernization of the gender system within Brazil's rising urban-industrial society accommodated new necessities and opportunities for women without fundamentally changing the gender inequality that underlay the larger structure of social inequality in Brazil.