BRAZIL is, famously, one of the world’s most unequal countries. Income of the richest 10% of the population is 38 times that of the poorest tenth. The ratio in Poland, which has similar income per person, is just eight to one. But at least the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT), in power since 2003, has been able to claim that, unlike in most other places, Brazilian inequality has fallen consistently on its watch. On September 18th it seemed this trend had come to an end. Data from the annual household survey, a mini-census of 150,000 families, showed an uptick in Brazil’s Gini coefficient, from 0.499 in 2012 to 0.500 in 2013 (0 signifies everyone has an identical income and 1 means that a single household takes everything).
If this was unwelcome news for President Dilma Rousseff, who is seeking a second term in an election two weeks from now, the next day offered hope of a respite. The national statistics office (IBGE), which compiles the survey, announced that it contained “extremely serious errors”, caused by applying the wrong weights to some of Brazil’s regions. Revised figures show that the Gini in fact edged down to...Continue reading
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