RES: Once a Close Economic Rival of China, India Falls Behind

[Alexandre Fenelon]

Brazil seems to have done better than both, China and India. What is Gini
for Brazil?

-No, we have a horrible performance. Our Ginni index is 60! When we consider
-other HDI indexes, we are very close to China, but we were much better by
-1949 (for instance, we had a life expectancy of 47 against 35 for China).
-On the other hand, by 1976 we fell behind China in life expectancy (57 vs
-63 years), infant mortality (70 vs 96/1000), but not in adult litteracy.
-After 1990 (an this is probably related to our 1988 constitution, which
-created a welfare state, at least in theory), we improved our performance,
-and now we have a life expectancy of 68 years (China 71) and infant
-mortality near 30/1000 (a real shame, but close to China´s 30-40/1000,
-unreliable data). Our relatively good indexes when compared with India
-are related to the fact that your country emerged from colony status with
-terrible conditions (I read elsewhere that overal mortality was 27/1000,
-infant mortality 200/1000, litteracy 15%, and the economy was essentially
-stagnant in the lest 100 years, with per capita industrial output falling
-more than 50% from 1750). So it´s not surprising we had better indexes.
-However, it´s interesting to note that both Brazil (after 1990) and China
-(from 1949-76, with the exception of 1958-60 famine) had relatively
-good improvement in HDI, while they had modest economic growth, and had
-a poor HDI performance in periods of robust growth (Brazil from 50´s to
-70´s and China after 1981).


                                         Alexandre Fenelon