Comparing Brazil’s states
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Brazil’s income disparities are great, but so is its progress
Jun 14th 2014 | SÃO PAULO | From the print edition / The Economist
IN 1974, to capture the income inequality for which his country was infamous, Edmar Bacha, a Brazilian economist, coined the term “Belíndia”—a small rich Belgium surrounded by a vast poor India. Football players and fans descending on the country for the World Cup, which began this week, will still see several Brazils, if not the disparities of Belíndia.
As our map of Brazil’s states shows, the richest part of the country, around the capital, Brasília, is not quite at Belgian levels. But it is as wealthy as Italy, measured by GDP per person in 2011 (the latest available data set) at market exchange rates. India, meanwhile, is much poorer than even the most destitute Brazilian states, Maranhão and Piauí, where income per head is three times higher than on the subcontinent and roughly equal to that of Jordan.
Mr Bacha would no doubt cheer that the poorest states have made greatest headway since Brazil last hosted the World Cup in 1950. At the time they were as impoverished as benighted Benin and war-torn Afghanistan were in 2011. Maranhão’s real income per person has risen sixfold in the intervening decades; Piauí’s more than sevenfold, which puts it firmly on the podium of best-performing Brazilian states in the period (not counting the Federal District around Brasília, whose construction only began in 1956).
In all, ten states were poorer in 1950 in real terms than India in 2011; ten were better off. (Today Brazil has 27 states.) The then capital, Rio de Janeiro, was at that time only as well-heeled as Peru is now. Today it has caught up with Estonia. As for Brazil as a whole, in 1950 it barely exceeded contemporary Egyptian levels of prosperity. Today it is on a par with the West Indian island paradise of St Kitts and Nevis. In the past ten years alone 36m Brazilians were brought out of extreme poverty, although critics point to another country, South Korea. In June 1950 it was poorer than Brazil—and on the brink of fratricidal war. Now its GDP per person is nearly double Brazil’s and its income distribution far less skewed.
Some things are unchanged. Nine of the 13 sides that competed in 1950 are back (although the finals have since ballooned to incorporate 32 teams). As today, the stadiums then were late and over budget. That won’t matter as long as history doesn’t repeat itself on the field: in 1950 Brazil lost in the final to Uruguay.
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