On the Recent Worsening of Income Distribution among the Jewish Population in Brazil

Brazilian income distribution is one of the most unequal in the world, yet the first 15 years of the twenty-first century showed some improvement in reducing inequality. However, data from Brazilian censuses show that the income distribution of the Jewish population in Brazil worsened from 2000 to 2010. The goal of this paper is to investigate whether this observed phenomenon should be attributed to the emergence of new Jewish identities among poorer segments of Brazilian society or a structural change in the more traditional Jewish community. We calculated Gini coefficients, Lorenz curves, and Kuznets ratios of the Jewish population (i) in Brazil, (ii) in the capital cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, considered as a unit, and (iii) among the general Brazilian population from microdata in the 1980 and 2010 censuses. The results show that the worsening of income distribution among the Jewish population in Brazil is more intense in areas outside of urban centers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. This finding suggests that the observed phenomenon should be attributed to emerging new identities rather than structural change in the more traditional community. A conclusion section addresses issues for further research.