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Inequality and the labour market: comparing India and Brazil

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Abstract

This article, which draws on a collaborative research project between institutes in India and Brazil, examines the patterns of inequality in the two countries, and their relationship with economic development. In Brazil inequality rose in the period up to the 1980s, but has since been falling; in India, inequality was stable or falling slightly until the 1980s, but has since been rising. The article discusses some of the sources of these long term trends, with particular reference to the growth regimes and labour markets in each country. It considers the role of social, political and economic forces and institutions in Brazil and India during different periods of time, and the influence of labour market structures and relationships. The article concludes by comparing the ways in which state interventions try to reduce inequality in each country, notably through income transfers, employment creation and labour market policies.

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Notes

  1. The two teams, whose work provides the basis for this article, include Taniya Chakrabarty, Nandita Gupta, Ashok Pankaj, Janine Rodgers, Vidhya Soundararajan and the author, all at IHD, New Delhi; and Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa, Maria Cristina Cacciamali, Fabio Tatei and Ian Prates at Cebrap, São Paulo. This article draws on work undertaken for a forthcoming book by Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa, Maria Cristina Cacciamali and Gerry Rodgers (Barbosa et al. in press) which provides a fuller analysis of issues and relationships discussed briefly here. References to some other papers produced by the team are given at the end of the article (see Cacciamali et al. (2015a, b), Barbosa et al. (2015) and Rodgers and Soundararajan (2016)).

  2. Renamed Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana in 2015.

References (For other papers see www.ihdindia.org/lmi)

  • Barbosa, Alexandre de Freitas, Maria Cristina Cacciamali and Gerry Rodgers, Growth and Inequality: The contrasting stories of Brazil and India, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi (in press).

  • Barbosa, Alexandre de Freitas, Maria Cristina Cacciamali, Gerry Rodgers and Fabio Tatei (2015), “Minimum wage in Brazil: A useful policy tool to reduce wage inequality?”, in Gregory Randolph and Knut Panknin (eds.), Global Wage Debates: Politics or Economics, JustJobs Network, September.

  • Boyer, Robert (1994), “Do labour institutions matter for economic development? A “Régulation” Approach for the OECD and Latin America with an extension to Asia”, in Gerry Rodgers (ed.), Workers, Institutions and Economic Growth in Asia, International Institute for Labour Studies, Geneva.

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  • Cacciamali, Maria Cristina, Taniya Chakrabarty, Gerry Rodgers and Fabio Tatei (2015a), “Minimum Wage Policy in Brazil and India and its Impact in Labour Market Inequality”, Institute for Human Development Working Paper 02/2015, New Delhi.

  • Cacciamali, Maria Cristina, Gerry Rodgers, Vidya Soundararajan and Fabio Tatei (2015b), “Wage Inequality in Brazil and India: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis”, Institute for Human Development Working Paper WP03/2015, New Delhi.

  • De, Rahul and Vamsi Vakulabharanam (2013), Growth and distribution regimes in India after Independence, paper presented at the World Economics Association Conference on Inequalities in Asia, 12 May–8 June.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, India

    Gerry Rodgers

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  1. Gerry Rodgers
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Correspondence to Gerry Rodgers.

Additional information

This is a revised version of the V.B. Singh Memorial Lecture given at the 57th Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, Srinagar, 12 October 2015.

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Rodgers, G. Inequality and the labour market: comparing India and Brazil. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 59, 39–55 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-016-0046-z

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