Good morning! Today, we talk about the state of Brazilian wealth, which goes some way to explaining the outlook of the 2022 presidential race. And the latest corruption suspicions against the Bolsonaro clan.
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Brazilian wealth is growing more concentrated
People in the top 1 percent of Brazil’s income scale accumulated 44.2 percent of the country’s wealth in 2000. Twenty-one years later, their share of the pie has grown to 49.3 percent, according to Credit Suisse’s latest Global Wealth Report. The number of millionaires, meanwhile, grew by 4.5 times between 2020 and 2022, to over 266,000 individuals.
Yes, but … In the same period, the Gini coefficient, a more broad-based measure of inequality that captures changes at both ends of the wealth spectrum, rose from 84.5 to 89.2, one of the highest figures in the world.
Why it matters. The data accentuates how massive inequality continues to be a defining feature in Brazilian society. While the number of millionaires grew, hunger and poverty rates shot up, and what is seen as...