Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient we measure the contribution to inequality of direct monetary transfers to and from the Brazilian State. Among the transfers from the State are wages of public workers, pensions and social assistance; the transfers to the State are direct taxes....

Extreme inequality in Brazil is self-evident. The historian José Murilo de Carvalho emblematically chose to end his book on the history of citizenship in Brazil with the severe diagnosis that 'inequality is the slavery of today, the new cancer that hinders the constitution of a democratic...