ABSTRACT
In 1968 the Brazil's economy surged forward, and from then until 1973 real annual increases in the gross national product averaged about 11.5 percent, a staggering rate of growth. Brazil's strongly growth-oriented policy correlates rather highly with an economy that, until the early 1980s, grew rapidly, but also one in which income concentration worsened. Though less drastic, there were also substantial dissimilarities in economic policy between Brazil and Peru, though both were placed in the same category. Venezuelan economic growth correlates reasonably well with government policy, but correlates even more highly with the value of oil exports. To a fairly significant extent, one's political and civil liberties are defined by government policy. Government policy in Peru and Mexico falls somewhere in between the more authoritarian regimes of Brazil and Cuba and the democratic regimes of Costa Rica and Venezuela.
