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

Justin R. Bucciferro () and Pedro H. G. Ferreira de Souza ()
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Justin R. Bucciferro: Colgate University
Pedro H. G. Ferreira de Souza: Department of Social Policy, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada

Chapter Chapter 6 in Time and Space, 2020, pp 131-156 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Brazil; Inequality; Exports; Region; Convergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-47553-6_6

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