ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 examines economic development and social policies in Brazil, questioning why a country so rich in natural resources should remain starkly unequal and underdeveloped. Several key theories of economic and social development are considered alongside Brazil’s history of economic development, with particular attention paid to Brazil’s historical dependency on external markets and late industrial development and construction of national infrastructure. The chapter then moves on to consider questions of human capital (e.g., Brazilian public education and healthcare), and recent social policies launched to address poverty and socio-economic inequality (for example, the Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer program). Rather than providing a descriptive account of Brazil’s recent economic rise and fall, this chapter attempts to analyze different theoretical perspectives on contemporary Brazilian economic development.
