Progress in the Struggle for Meaningful Development: Brazil

How would Brazil’s Development performance be evaluated and future priorities chosen?
The comments presented herein reflect the evolution of the term development by examining the experience of Brazil in Development.
The answer of this question is not as simple as the question is. If this question was imposed at the beginning of the 1950s to the end of 1960s, its answer would depend primarily only on the calculation of the rate of real Gross National Income (GNI). Real per capita GNI as a measure of Economic Development only takes into consideration the ability of a nation to expand its output at a faster rate than the rate of population growth. A little or secondary attention would be paid to problems of poverty, discrimination, unemployment, and income distribution. GDP per capita in the period of 1965-1990 was 1.4%, and for 1990-2000 it was 1.5%. The textbook argues that the period 1965-1980 was a “lost decade of development”. Nevertheless, Brazil’s performance was the best in Latin America.
By the mid of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, if the same question was re-asked, the answer would be definitely different and more complex than just dividing the Gross National Income by the number of population to calculate the per capita GNI. During this period the so-called “Capabilities Approach” of Amartya Sen was introduced in which he argued that economic development can not be merely measured by GNI or by utility as conventionally understood; what matters is not things a person has, but what a person is or what he can do. This shows that priorities started to be given to the non-economic, non-quantifiable, factors such as discrimination, education, health system, and the like. Therefore, to accurately evaluate the development performance of Brazil, a set of non-economic variables should be considered as well as the economic variables.

- Taking into account the above non-economic factors, Brazil ranked 72nd on the UNDP’s Human Development Index, 9 position lower than would be predicted by its income.
- Although the child mortality rate is poor by the standards of comparable countries today, Brazil has made great progress from 1960, when its rate was 159/1000. 10% of children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition.
- Primary school completion rate is very low for an upper-middle-income country.
- Approximately 4% of the population are worked children, (7 Million the child labor/175 Million the overall population = 4%). Eradication of child labor was officially declared as a priority.

- Most of the poor in Brazil are black or Mulatto.
- Racism is a crime in Brazil, but no one has ever sent to jail for it.
- Even in the states where the Black constitutes the majority, their representation in the government is rare.


- According to World Bank estimates, in 2000, 25.4% of the population of Brazil lived on less than $2 a day, and 9% with incomes below $1 a day.

To conclude, when planning for or evaluating Economic Development performance, economic and non-economic considerations have to be integrated. Economics is not a value-free area of study. That’s why we may differ when selecting priorities because Economics is a social not an exact science. However, we all agree with what Mahatma Gandhi called for; “the realization of human potential”.

References:
Michael P. Todaro, Stephen C. Smith 2006, Economic Development 9th edition, Chapter 1 , Pearson Education Limited.