ABSTRACT
After growing fast for almost two decades under the military regime, an external debt crisis at the beginning of the 1980s ended this growth cycle of the Brazilian economy. The debt crisis started a decade characterised by an inflation of over three digits. This economic scenario was the background to the transition back to democracy. Since 1994, the Brazilian economy has undergone two major periods marked by different economic and social policies, and thus major changes in the population’s well-being.
