Gender Equality and Economic Growth in Brazil

In recent years, Brazil has been very successful in reducing poverty and income inequality. According to World Bank data, relative poverty (based on a purchasing power parity [PPP] US$2 per day metric) has fallen markedly, from 21 per-cent of the population in 2003 to 11 percent in 2009. Ex-treme poverty (based on a PPP US$1.25 per day metric) also dropped significantly, from 9.8 percent in 2004 to 6.1 percent in 2009. At the same time, income inequality fell significantly. Between 2001 and 2009, the income growth rate of the poor-est decile of the population was 7 percent per year, while that of the richest decile was 1.7 percent; as a result, income in-equality (as measured by the Gini index) fell significantly, from 0.594 in 2001 to 0.521 in 2011—a 50-year low. Key driv-ers of these achievements have been low inflation; sustained economic growth, at a yearly average of 4.0 percent durin