Minimum Wage in Brazil

The Minimum Wage in Brazil


Brazil has a population of 169 million people - is the country with the highest inequality index in the world, according to the 1999 Human Development Report of UNDP. About 80 percent of the population in the world have an average income below the average income of Brazil. Nevertheless, the richest 10% of Brazil's population receive 48% of the total income and the poorest 40% have a share of only 7% of the total income. This means that the average income of the rich is more than 20 times the average income of the poor. In most Latin American countries this factor remains around 10, whereas in the highly industrialised European countries it does not even reach 4. In Brazil, there are therefore a lot of very poor people surrounded by sufficient resources to eliminate their poverty. According to the governmental Institute of Applied Research (IPEA), 33 percent of the Brazilian population is considered poor, that is 50.1 million people. The big pockets of po...