Relações entre desenvolvimento e desigualdade: uma releitura da curva de Kuznets para os estados do Brasil 1995-2014

Abstract

The Brazil is a historically unequal country. It is noted that between 1970 and 1987, Brazil was the country that grew the most economically in the world, but It is social indicators did not folow the same trend. Recent data show that in 2015, although Brazil was the 9th position in the world ranking of Gross Domestic Product, It is position in the world ranking of the Human Development Index was 79th. This discrepancy is attributed to fact the brazilian economic growth occurring in a concentrated way, without distribution to the needy population. In this context that permeates the problematic of this study: What is the relationship between income inequality and development / growth variables in Brazil? The central objective is to analyse the impacts of growth and economic development variables on brazilian income inequality. The methodology adopted consisted of an extension of the pioneering theory- Kuznets Curve- adding variables of the modern models (imperfect credit, social conflit and political economy) of inequality. The statistical method used was panel econometrics for the brazilian states in the period 1995-2014. As the main results, the variables that influence the Gini Index variations are, respectively, average years of schooling, homicide rate, per capita income, industrial electric energy consumption, welfare expenditure and social security per capita and trade opening. In addition, it has been shown that not only per capita income explains the variations in income inequality, on the contrary, in Brazil it is further intensifying the gap between rich and poor.