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.

During the 90’s, the Brazilian economy went thought important changes. The economy was opened to both international commerce and capital flows, inflation rate dropped steeply and the state presence was reduced. These structural changes had important effects on the economic growth and on the labor market. First, the industrial employment fall was compensated by the increase of the commercial and services employment. However, after 1997 this phenomenon almost finished, leading to an increase on the unemployment rate.

Este artigo detalha a metodologia desenvolvida para o índice de preços da cesta de consumo da população idosa brasileira (IPC-3I) que passará a ser divulgado em bases regulares. A estrutura do texto é a seguinte: a Seção 1 é a introdução. A Seção 2 descreve o cálculo do índice específico e compara a sua estrutura com a do índice de preços ao consumidor. A Seção 3 analisa, também, de forma comparativa o custo da cesta de consumo dos idosos.