Ever-more sophisticated studies on the methodological approach and the conceptual scope of poverty have led to a consensus among scholars on the dynamic characteristic of this phenomenon – in other words, the existence of an in-and-out of privation movement of individuals and families. Within...

Ever-more sophisticated studies on the methodological approach and the conceptual scope of poverty have led to a consensus among scholars on the dynamic characteristic of this phenomenon - in other words, the existence of an in-and-out of privation movement of individuals and families. Within...

Brazil has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty and inequality. This reduction is explained by strong growth but also by effective social policies. Besides growth, public services and cash transfers have played the biggest role, the latter notably through the successful “Bolsa...

This study searches for suggestive evidence of an ethnic inequality trap in educational attainment in Brazil and Chile. The research aims to cover an existing gap in the literature on inequality traps and proposes an empirical approach to assess certain conditions which might imply its...

We present the preliminary results of our analysis of top incomes in Brazil from 2006 to 2012. We describe the evolution of the income shares of the top 1% and the top 5% and estimate a "corrected" Gini coefficient. The data used comes from personal income tax returns, national accounts and...

This research note presents estimates of top income shares for Brazil based on tax return data from 1933 to 2012, as well as a brief overview of personal income taxation in the country. I also discuss some of the major methodological challenges, especially pertaining to data availability, and...

This paper applies a non-parametric tool, the "relative distribution", to identify patterns of changes in Brazil's household income distribution over the period 2001-2011. Despite the sharp decline in income inequality recently experienced by the country, we are able to document an increased...

This paper investigates the increases in inequality observed in Brazil during the 1980s, as well as the declines in the first half of the 1990s. It also documents the more cyclical trends in poverty during the same period. Using static decompositions of i

Local institutional and structural (meso) factors can play a role in mediating the returns to a macro-social policy. I focus on the Brazilian cash-transfer-programme Bolsa Familia and check how contextual features influence the returns to transfers. Building on Amartya Sen's work, I assess the...

Local institutional and structural (meso) factors can play a role in mediating the returns to a macro-social policy. I focus on the Brazilian cash-transfer-programme Bolsa Familia and check how contextual features influence the returns to transfers. Building on Amartya Sen's work, I assess the...