A new poverty profile for Brazil using PPV, PNAD and census data

This paper contains a poverty profile for Brazil, based on 1996 data. Poverty measures and shares are presented for a wide range of population subgroups, based on household level data from the PNAD 1996, adjusted for imputed rents and spatial differences in cost of living. Robustness of the profile is verified with respect to different poverty lines, different spatial price deflators, and different equivalence scales. Overall poverty incidence ranges from 23% with respect to an indigence line (15% for urban areas) to 45% with respect to a more generous poverty line (37% for urban areas). More importantly however, poverty is found to vary significantly across regions and city sizes, with rural areas, small and medium towns and the metropolitan peripheries of the North and Northeast regions being poorest. In addition, education, race and the labor status of the household head are important correlates of vulnerability. The marginal impact of each of these attributes, controlling for all others, is investigated through probit regressions run on PPV data. These confirm the importance of spatial variables, but suggest that education remains the central personal attribute determining the likelihood that a household experiences poverty. Some tentative recommendations to improve the quality of the available data sets are also made.