Education or Inflation? the Roles of Structural Factors and Macroeconomic Instability in Explaining Brazilian Inequality in the 1980s

Type Working Paper - The Roles of Structural Factors and Macroeconomic Instability in Explaining Brazilian Inequality in the 1980s (July 1998). LSE STICERD Research Paper
Title Education or Inflation? the Roles of Structural Factors and Macroeconomic Instability in Explaining Brazilian Inequality in the 1980s
Author(s)
Issue 41
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 1998
URL http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/6586/1/Education_or_Inflation_The_Roles_of_Structural_Factors_and_Macroecon​omic_Instability_in_Explaining_Brazilian_Inequality_in_the_1980s.pdf
Abstract
This paper investigates possible explanations for the increases in inequality observed in Brazil during the 1980s. While the static decomposition of inequality by household characteristics reveal that education and race of the household head, as well as geographic locations, can account for a substantial proportion of inequality levels, a dynamic decomposition suggests that changes in inequality are not explained by income or allocation effects across these groupings, but by pure within-group inequality effects. The analysis then turns to the role of macroeconomic instability, and finds some significant correlation and regression coefficients which suggest a link between inflation and inequality, while poverty appears to be more strongly driven by real wages, growth and employment.

Related studies

»