The Political Economy of the BRICS Countries. Группа авторов. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Группа авторов
Издательство: Ingram
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Жанр произведения: Политика, политология
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9789811202223
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only a brief summary here. Jayaraj and Subramanian (2012a, 2012b) draw upon the literature on the “Talmudic Estate Problem” (that concerns the division of an estate among heirs) and the allocation of a poverty alleviation budget. They employ various fairness criteria and use NSS data on consumption expenditure to examine how the pie of Indian growth has been divided among various quantiles of the population and among socioeconomic groups. They conclude that the actual allocation among these sections of the population falls short of even the minimally fair criterion. Suryanarayana and Das (2014) examine two different elasticities (mean consumption with respect to mean income, median consumption with respect to mean consumption) and an “inclusive coefficient,” which depends upon the share of the population that has less than 60% of the median consumption. The above elasticities have to be greater than unity and the inclusive coefficient needs to be high for growth to be considered broad-based. They consider the entire population and disadvantaged caste groups and use NSS data on consumption expenditure to conclude that this is not the case — in fact, they find that the inclusive coefficient has fallen during the period 1993–1994 to 2011–2012.

      Coming to Brazil, inequality continues to be high, but has fallen substantially. Both poverty and extreme poverty have fallen. Some studies that have rigorously examined whether Brazilian growth has been pro-poor or not have concluded in the affirmative, e.g. Kakwani et al. (2010) for the period 2001–2004. Why has inequality fallen and growth been pro-poor? Several studies shed light on this question. Barros et al. (2010) use a decomposition analysis to understand the various proximate factors that have contributed to the reduction in inequality. A major contribution has been made by change in the distribution of labor income per adult, which has in turn been driven by a reduction in skill premium and decrease in educational inequality. A second important component is the change in the distribution of non-labor income per adult. Non-labor incomes have increased considerably due to public transfers — pensions, social security benefits, and conditional cash transfers (Bolsa Escola and Bolsa Familia). Ferreira et al. (2009) provide evidence from several studies to show that social policies and their effective targeting have played a major role in reducing inequality and poverty.25 They also document expenditures on the social sector since the 1980s (Ferreira et al., 2009, Figure 1) showing that there is a sharp increase after 1988, when the constitution came into effect, e.g. during the period 1991–1998, the monthly benefit bill increased by more than four times ($180–750 million). Ferreira de Souza (2012) points out that social security and pensions comprised about 11% of the GDP in 2006. He also highlights the crucial role played in the reduction of inequality and poverty by the minimum wage, which is also linked to government benefits. Since the constitution came into effect, the minimum wage has increased considerably — in real terms it more than trebled (US $PPP 83 to US $295) during the period 1995–2011 (Ferreira de Souza, 2012, Figure 6). Cornia (2015, Table 8) also documents a substantial increase in real minimum wage in Brazil as well as in some other Latin American countries.

      Discussion and Conclusions

      In the analysis above, I have provided an overview of changes in inequality and poverty in India and Brazil in roughly the past two and half decades. In India, inequality has increased, and although poverty has decreased, the reduction has been disappointing given the high growth. On the contrary, in Brazil, inequality and poverty have both reduced substantially, although inequality still continues to be quite high. This chapter highlights the crucial role played by social policies in these differential outcomes.

      References

      Anand, I. and A. Thamphi (2016). “Recent trends in wealth inequality in India,” Economic and Political Weekly, LI(50): 59–67.

      Balakrishnan, P. (2010). Economic Growth in India: History and Prospect, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

      Barbara,