Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) - (Working papers)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/38293

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    Mapping Recent Trends in the Distribution of Wealth in Brazil
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), 2023-07-19) Lavinas, Lena; Cordilha, Ana Carolina; Bressan, Lucas; Rubin, Pedro
    The interest in mapping wealth and how it is concentrated is relatively recent in Brazil, even though Brazilian society remains one of the most unequal in the world, when inequality is measured by taking only labour income and social benefits. When it comes to wealth, the picture is even more appalling. The present paper describes the recent evolution of financial and non-financial personal wealth in Brazil. The aim is to indicate how the different forms of wealth - in particular the strong expansion of fictitious capital - reshape inequalities in Brazil. It starts by contextualizing the difficulties encountered in accessing data on stocks of wealth in Brazil. In the absence of surveys on wealth, the paper describes how pensions and rental income are appropriated by income strata, using research on household spending. It then highlights how land, a real asset par excellence, is being transformed into a financial asset, attracting institutional investors and international capital. Finally, it summarizes some preliminary ideas on how the transition in the nature of wealth, driven by a financialized accumulation regime, impacts the framework of structural inequalities that have long characterized the Brazilian society.
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    The Brazilian Tax System: Regressive and Biased
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), 2023-07-12) Bressan, Lucas; Cordilha, Ana Carolina; Constantino, João Paulo; Rubin, Pedro
    Brazil's tax system plays a central role in perpetuating and deepening the country's alarming levels of income and wealth inequality. The goal of this article is to unpack the regressive and biased nature of the Brazilian tax system. It combines data from national and international institutions for the past two decades to provide a comprehensive understanding of the tax system's role in shaping income and wealth gaps. The article starts by discussing why income and property taxation, potentially progressive instruments, lacks effectiveness and make the poorest groups contribute proportionally more than the upper classes. It then argues that many forms of real estate and asset properties are not taxed as much as in other countries, which curbs the possibility of reducing social disparities. To end, the study points out some of the major flaws that prevent the system from being effectively redistributive, including issues related to tax waivers, tax evasion, and the difficulties in tackling financial wealth. The conclusion suggests that changes such as updating income tax brackets, increasing taxation on large properties and fortunes, and implementing taxes on financial investments would foster a more equitable society in Brazil.
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    Brazil Colonial Legacy and Growth Patterns
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies ISCIS), 2023-07-12) Lena, Lavinas; Domingues, José Maurício; Gonçalves, Guilherme Leite; Cordilha, Ana Carolina; Bedê, Francisco; Bressan, Lucas; Constantino, João Paulo; Rubin, Pedro
    This paper provides a very concise view of the trajectory of Brazil since it became a republic. It goes through the 20th century and into the 21st century to systematize how the different phases of economic development reproduced and reformatted the inequalities inherited from the country´s colonial-slave period. Its objective is to provide a timeline, framed by the structural transformations in the economy and in the political regime, which has shifted between democratic and authoritarian periods, always with a strong role for the State. In addition to characterizing the industrial accumulation pattern of what was dubbed "developmentalism", and the rupture with this pattern caused by the financialization of the economy, in the midst of the democratization process of the country, starting in the mid-1980s, the paper briefly describes how the social question evolved over time and how the oligarchic power structures remained dominant in the state apparatus and in the political system.