RIGHTS-BRAZIL: The Rich Earn 53.5 Times More than the Poor

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 6 2001 (IPS) - In Brazil, which has the dubious distinction of being one of the countries with the highest levels of social inequality in the world, the income of the richest 10 percent of the population is 53.5 times that of the poorest 10 percent, despite the taming of inflation and social advances chalked up in the 1990s.

The poor distribution of income, which is more unequal than in any other nation of similar or higher levels of development, is highlighted by the ‘Synthesis of Social Indicators 2000’, a report by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which compares statistics from 1992 and 1999.

The report points to some improvement, since the wealthiest Brazilians earned 57.2 times more than the poorest in 1992, compared to a factor of 53.5 in 1999. But that advance was basically due to the stabilisation of the local currency since the Plan Real went into effect in 1994, said IBGE chairman Sergio Besserman.

The high inflation that plagued Brazilians for three decades aggravated long-standing inequalities, because the poor were unable to protect their income from the steady rise in prices through financial investments, as the middle- and upper-income were able to do.

But since the abrupt drop in inflation posted in 1994, the poor no longer suffer a constant erosion of their income.

Among the most notorious aspects of Brazilian society are the mechanisms that “perpetuate inequality” by making it difficult to correct the unfair distribution of income, which has characterised South America’s giant during its 500 years of history as a country, said Besserman.

It is more difficult to combat inequality than to fight poverty in Brazil, said the official. The fact that the income of the richest 10 percent was 22.1 times that of the poorest 40 percent in 1999, compared to 20.8 times in 1992, shows that the concentration of wealth has increased.

Government officials as well as researchers are confident, however, that in the future, advances on the education front will lead to a decline in the social inequality that has become sort of a badge of identity in the world for this country of 168 million.

Illiteracy fell from 17.2 to 13.3 percent between 1992 and 1999, while the proportion of children aged seven to 14 enrolled in school climbed from 86.6 to 95.7 percent.

Meanwhile, average years of schooling among 18 and 19-year-olds rose from 5.9 to 7.3, and from 5.0 to 5.7 among adults over 25.

That means that when today’s adolescents enter the labour market, they will enjoy a marked advantage over the current generation of adult workers, said Ricardo Paes de Barros, director of social questions at the Institute of Applied Economic Research, which like the IBGE answers to the Planning Ministry.

Nevertheless, Brazil must intensify its efforts in education, said Paes de Barro, since the average level of schooling is among the lowest in Latin America, below Panama’s 8.4 years and Venezuela’s 7.2 years, for example.

There are also gaps between Brazil’s 27 states. Infant mortality, for instance, which dropped overall from 44.3 to 34.5 of 1,000 live births between 1992 and 1999, ranged in 1999 from 66.1 per 1,000 in Alagoas, a small state in Brazil’s impoverished northeast, to 18.4 per 1,000 in the wealthy state of Rio Grande do Sul in the south.

In the state of Sao Paulo, meanwhile, 90.2 percent of housing had modern sewerage systems, while that proportion stood at just 0.7 percent in Tocantins and 0.8 percent in Amapa, in northern Brazil.

The gender gap also remains wide, with women earning much less than men.

In addition, inequalities loom large between those classified in the latest official census as “white” (54 percent of the population) and those who describe themselves as “black” (5.4 percent) or “brown” (39.9 percent).

While illiteracy stands at just 8.3 percent among “whites”, it rises to 20 percent among those categorised as “black” or “brown”. Furthermore, “whites” have an average of 6.7 years of schooling, compared to just 4.5 for “blacks”.

Each additional year of schooling means an increase in the income of “whites” three times higher than that achieved by “blacks”.

The overall progress seen in Brazil’s social indicators over the past decade thus conceals persistent inequalities. Another negative development was the intensification of urban violence, which has become the leading cause of death among young men aged 15 to 19.