State Transfers, Taxes and Income Inequality in Brazil

Medeiros, Marcelo; Souza, Pedro Herculano Guimarães Ferreira de

doi:10.1590/1981-38212014000200009

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…It was not until the late-1990s that urban and rural workers, formal and informal, were integrated into programmes of social assistance for poverty alleviation. However, no government of the period, facing a complicated parliamentary arithmetic, fundamentally changed the corporatist policy structures it inherited (Medeiros and Souza, 2015). When Congress was given renewed power after 1988 it only became a new channel for the articulation of segmented social interests that developed over the previous decades.…”

Section: Democratization and Redistributive Reformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Democratization Cause Redistribution? Evidence from Sweden and Brazil

Bengtsson

Morgan

2022

Palgrave Studies in Economic History

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This paper explores the relationship between democratization and economic redistribution using case study analysis applied to Sweden and Brazil. We find that democratization is intimately connected to redistribution through the welfare state, but as an event in itself is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of redistributive reforms. Democratization is not strictly necessary, because in anticipation of social unrest and social protest movements, political regimes, including undemocratic regimes, imposed welfare reforms to co-opt these movements. This can be seen for example in Sweden in the early twentieth century or in Brazil in the 1930s, 1940s and the 1970s. Democratization is also not sufficient for redistribution, since people also needed to act politically within the new democratic regimes to make use of the formal constitutional changes. The ability to act politically depends on organizational opportunities, which are facilitated when there are few barriers to influence policymaking (e.g., strikes, unionization, working class political parties, unified labour markets, reformist intellectuals and a competent and cooperative bureaucracy). The lack of these factors is enough to introduce substantial temporal lag in the adoption of reforms. More generally, given that democratization itself is a form of redistribution, the same social forces i.e. social movements representing disenfranchised lower-income groups commonly push for both, confounding the effect of democratization on redistribution. The historical case studies in this paper help us understand how.

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“…It was not until the late-1990s that urban and rural workers, formal and informal, were integrated into programmes of social assistance for poverty alleviation. However, no government of the period, facing a complicated parliamentary arithmetic, fundamentally changed the corporatist policy structures it inherited (Medeiros & Souza, 2015). When Congress was given renewed power after 1988 it only became a new channel for the articulation of segmented social interests that developed over the previous decades.…”

Section: Democratization Redistributive Reformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scandinavia and South America—A Tale of Two Capitalisms

2022

Palgrave Studies in Economic History

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“…This conclusion is mainly due to the large weight of indirect taxes in the tax collection system, approximately 55%, and the impact of such taxes on the price of the typical consumer basket of lower-income families. Medeiros and Souza (2015) were even more forceful in assessing the unfavorable role of Brazilian fi scal policy in the distribution of income. Evaluating only the direct monetary fl ows between families and the public sector, thus without considering the impact of indirect taxes, they concluded that (mostly through the public sector workers' earnings and pensions) the Brazilian State contributes heavily to raising the Gini index in the country, being unable to impose direct taxation to counterbalance this effect.…”

Section: Taxes Public Expenditure and Income Distribution: A Revimentioning

confidence: 99%

Giving with one hand and taking away with the other

2019

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This study analyses the impact of fiscal policy on income inequality for the Brazilian states, over the period 2004-2014. With system GMM we find robust evidence that while increases in total expenditures have a positive impacton inequality, total revenues have a negative effect, thus the net effects may not be positive. With a particular focus on disaggregated expenditures, we also identify that the negative effects that expenditures related to public debt can generate may overcome the positive effects of social expenditures. Therefore, the discussion on how to determine and qualify social spending levels in Brazil, which are necessary to combat poverty and reduce social and income inequalities, is directly related to the revision of the tax collection system.

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“…Studying the redistributive role of the social welfare system in Greece, Mitrakos (2014) finds evidence of an inequality-reducing effect of transfers. Medeiros and Souza (2015) examine inequality in Brazil and their results suggest that the pension system in the country is slightly inequality-increasing. While social assistance transfers tend to mitigate inequality, this effect is minimal because of their minor share in total income.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Bulgaria

Mihaylova

Bratoeva-Manoleva

2017

South East European Journal of Economics and Business

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The paper analyzes the distributional effects of social transfers in Bulgaria in the period 2000-2014, using income inequality decomposition by factor components. The results suggest that social transfers mitigate income inequality, but this effect varies depending on the type of transfer. Pensions exert the strongest influence due to their significant share in total income, which also rises over time. Family allowances are pro-poor in nature, but because of their small share in beneficiaries’ total income, their impact on overall inequality is much weaker. “Other social benefits” have the weakest inequality-reducing effect, which is due to their higher concentration towards the richest decile and increasing share in total income. Despite the inequality-decreasing impact of social transfers, we argue that they should not be regarded as the sole remedy for the sharp income disparities in the country, but need to be accompanied by relevant active labor market policies.

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State Transfers, Taxes and Income Inequality in Brazil

Cited by 9 publications

References 38 publications

Does Democratization Cause Redistribution? Evidence from Sweden and Brazil

Scandinavia and South America—A Tale of Two Capitalisms

Giving with one hand and taking away with the other

Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Bulgaria

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