http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/PDFs/TDs/td_0800.pdf

During last two decades, Brazil presented an enormous inequality in income distribution and great poverty level. Thus, these work aims describe the actual situation and temporal evolution of the magnitude and nature of poverty and inequality in Brazil during this period and investigate the causality among these dimensions. Further, it aims investigate the economic viability of policy designed to poverty reduction and justify the importance of making strategies, which do not disregard the economic growth, but emphasize the role of distributive policies in this process. The evaluation of relative importance of absolute or relative scarcity of resources and their distribution to determining poverty in Brazil, show that the origin of Brazilian poverty is not this scarcity. Otherwise, one see that the enormous inequality degree in income distribution, which have remained stable during last two decades, constitute as principal determinant of poverty.