Macroeconomics, the Job Market, and Income Distribution in Brazil over the Recent Past: Progress, Regression, and Challenges

For decades, Brazil has been known as one of the countries with the worst income distributions in the world. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Gini index for household income distribution per capita oscillated systematically around 0.6, an extremely high level reached by just a few countries. Starting in the early 2000s, however, income inequality in Brazil took a new turn. ²