Measured by the Gini coefficient, income inequality in Brazil rose from 0.57 in 1981 to 0.63 in 1989, before falling back to 0.56 in 2004. This latest figure would lower Brazil's world inequality rank from 2nd (in 1989) to 10th (in 2004). Poverty incidence also followed an inverted U-curve over...

This paper uses Vietnam as a case study in rapidly assessing the strengths and weaknesses of an existing system of transfers and safety nets. Data are taken to be weak; in particular, rigorous ex-post evaluations of the components of the existing social security system are not available in time...

This paper analyses the evolution of inequality and poverty in Brazil during the 1980s, using a large repeated cross-section household survey data set. We calculate standard scalar measures of inequality and poverty, together with decile means and decile shares. We also present percentile...

This paper examines the impact of inequality on poor people in Latin America. It is argued that development policies in Latin America and other developing regions should focus not only on eliminating poverty and deprivation but also on preventing and reducing inequality. By inequality we refer...

This paper offers an axiomatic characterization of two classes of poverty measures that are sensitive to inequality of opportunity -- one a strict subset of the other. The proposed indices are sensitive not only to income shortfalls from the poverty line, but also to differences in the...

This paper develops a micro-econometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, we also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for the conditional distributions of education,...