ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to contribute to the improvement of our understanding of some issues with a focus on Brazil. It examines a broad approach to the national system of innovation (NSI) and utilises the Latin American structuralist perspective to examine the relations between the Brazilian innovation system and inequality. The chapter analyses poverty and inequality patterns and trends in Brazil, showing how the structural, multifaceted and broad character of inequality in the country affects the innovation process in different ways. It highlights how the policies and institutions that constitute the NSI co-evolve with inequality at personal and regional levels. The chapter aims to underline the distinct processes that characterised the unequal distributive profile in Brazil. The chapter explores some impacts of the improvements of income distribution during the 2000 decade, with special emphasis on an issue that has gained increasing attention in the international sphere: the expansion of the so-called ‘middle class’.
