Public expenditure and social inequality: The Brazilian federal government budget between 1995 and 2016

Abstract

This paper aims to show that over the last decades, the Brazilian federal government's budget policy has allowed both the expansion of social spending and the reduction of inequality, as well as the concentration of income in Brazil. The article analyzes the budget expenditures arguing that the trajectory of the Brazilian public budget in the contemporary democratic regime was affected by four different dimensions that operated contradictorily. The first of these dimensions concerns the centralization versus decentralization of public resources. The second dimension is the permanent dispute over the public fund versus the constitutional earmarking. Actions of greater transparency and accountability on budgets have operated in contradiction with the growing complexity of public accounts. Finally, the expansion of social spending-which produced a reduction of social inequalities-grew in tandem with the regressivity of the tax collection.