From a methodological point of view, this paper makes two contributions to the literature. One contribution is the proposal of a new measure of pro-poor growth. This new measure provides the linkage between growth rates in mean income and in income inequality. In this context, growth is defined as pro-poor (or anti-poor) if there is a gain (or loss) in the growth rate due to a decrease (or increase) in inequality. The other contribution is a decomposition methodology that explores linkages growth patterns, and labour market performances.

This study synthesizes the recent trends and cycles of poverty and inequality during the 1992 to 2004 period in Brazil, detailing some of its closest determinants with special emphasis on the role played by incomes policies. This is a condensed version of the work found in Neri (2007) http://www3.fgv.br/ibrecps/RET3/engl/index.htm. In the second section, we describe poverty long-run movements by monitoring the achievement of the first goal of the millennium development goal of reducing poverty as insufficiency of income.

This paper analyses the effect of income policies on income distribution in Brazil, its nearterm impacts and potential long-term effects through the distribution of opportunities. It demonstrates the impact of electoral cycles motivating the expansion of monetary transfers. It evaluates the targeting efficiency of the principal income policies in terms of the fiscal costs versus short-term benefits to social welfare. We take advantage of the recent expansion of these benefits to test how this affected the distribution of opportunities.

The recently released "Educational PAC" attempts to place basic education at the center of the social debate. We have subsidized this debate, offering a diagnosis of how different education levels can impact individuals' lives through broad and easily interpreted indicators. Initially, we analyze how much each educational level reaches the poorest population. For example, how are those in the bottom strata of income distribution benefited by childcare centers, private secondary education, public university or adult education.

Brazil is a country where the 50% poorest detain nearly 10% of its aggregate income and where the 10% richest detain almost 50% of aggregate income4 . The corollary of this high degree of inequality is that if one is only concerned with maximizing the level of the GDP, the implicit social welfare function adopted devotes half of its weight to the well being of 10% of the population. In other words, Brazilian concentration of income creates anomalies within the representative agent assumptions implicit in macroeconomic analysis where people are worth what they earn.