Desigualdade de renda e crescimento econômico: uma análise da curva de Kuznets para os municípios do estado de São Paulo (1991, 2000, 2010)

Abstract

The present work aims to investigate the relation between income inequality and economic growth proposed by Kuznets (1955). It is postulated that the relation presents the following behavior: an advance of economic growth generates an increase in income inequality in the first stages of growth, starting from which there is an inflection point that represents when the inequality begins to decline in response to the benefits brought about by economic growth to the society, known as the hypothesis of the inverted U. The present work tests this postulate for the municipalities of the state of São Paulo in the years 1991, 2000 and 2010. The methodology utilized for the empirical analysis is econometric with panel data; the data are from the Atlas of Human Development in Brazil (2013) and from the State System for Data Analysis (SEADE), a foundation linked to the São Paulo State Secretariat for Planning and Management. The empirical evidence does not corroborate the hypothesis of Kuznets, that is, the curve in the inverted U pattern was not verified for the Sao Paulo municipalities. In fact an N pattern curve is observed, which suggests that inequality tends, after some improvement, to recur. This result corroborates more recent works that criticize the traditional format of the Kuznets Curve.