Income inequality and human capital development

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Bruno Gorgulho
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/11494
• topic: Savings; Household survey; Brasil; Desigualdade; Pesquisa domiciliar; Ciência política; Poupança; Capital humano; Desenvolvimento econômico; Renda - Distribuição - Brasil - Indicadores

Human Capital investments are essential for the economic development of a country. In Brazil, several sources point to the lack of qualified workforce as a cause of slower economic growth. This dissertation explores the theoretical linkages made from income inequality to economic performance. The empirical section focuses on one of the theories presented, the one on creditmarket imperfections. According to this theory, imperfect credit markets are poor resource allocators and do not allow for low income individuals to invest in their own human capital. In Brazil, there is a lack of empirical studies aimed at testing the channels through which inequality affects growth, therefore this research gains significance. The results presented here were drawn from family household survey – POF – undertaken by the IBGE. Data has evidenced that education investments grow as a percentage of the total budget with raises of income. Raises in income for very high income classes do not increase education spending. The data suggests the existence of a budget constraint for low and middle class Brazilians from all regions. It has been found strong evidence that low and middle income classes in Brazil have limited access to credit-markets. Therefore, there is evidence that redistribution would increase aggregate spending on education.