Mecanismos de reprodução da desigualdade social no Brasil

Abstract

Inequality is a multidimensional phenomenon with historic details associated with the process of formation and economic development of capitalist societies. Latin America is the world’s most unequal continent and Brazil stands out as one of the countries with the highest concentration of income, even amongst its Latin American peers. Despite the rapid economic growth and monetary stabilization, Brazil wasn’t capable of reverting the cycle of reproduction of its inequalities until the 1990s. It is only possible to see State-coordinated actions with the objective of reversing the tendency of increasing inequality after the adoption of a sociallyoriented economic model in 2003. The model that combines strengthening the internal market, low unemployment rates and social programs lasted 10 years, a period that the World Bank calls the “golden decade” of the Brazilian economy. In 2014, in the midst of a political, economic and institutional crisis, this model was substituted by economic austerity. Despite its historic character, social disparity is still present in the sense that its mechanisms are still running to increase the distance between rich and poor. This dissertation’s objective is to identify the impacts of the adoption of economic austerity on the inequality indicators from 2014. The approval of the Constitutional Amendment of the expenditures ceiling in 2016 took away the State’s capability of operationalizing an anti-cyclical fiscal policy - above all in a context of low economic activity and fiscal deficit. In a context of economic stagnation, Brazil dives into recession with the Covid-19 pandemic and sees an increase in its social problems