“Brazilian Cities Are The Most Efficient Poverty Factories In The World”

Knowledge wants to be expensive: State of the Cities, €44

ONU: cidades brasileiras têm maior disparidade de renda: Brazilian cities are the most efficient income disparity factories in the world, according to a UN report.

Or so the BBC Brasil reports. The Beeb does not, however, present the numerical evidence for its claim that Brazilian cities present higher indices of inequality than any other cities in the world.

It cites almost no hard numbers from the UN-Habitat report at all, in fact. It seems to have simply lifted factoids straight from the press release, in fact, rather than actually reading the report. From the Latin American fact sheet released by the flacks along with the report.

In Brazil, unemployment rose from 4.3 per cent in 1990 to 12.3 per cent in 2003, and average wages of employees in the formal industrial sector fell by 4.3 per cent in 2003. Unemployment and declining wages in urban areas have polarized income distribution in urban areas. For this and other historical reasons, Brazilian cities today have the greatest disparities in income distribution in the world.

The BBC Brasil will now interview a single source from UN-Habitat who will say exactly the same thing.

As cidades brasileiras são as que apresentam a maior disparidade de distribuição de renda no mundo, segundo o relatório anual do Programa das Nações Unidas para os Assentamentos Humanos (UN-Habitat).

Brazilian cities present the highest income disparity in the world according to the annual report of the UN-Habitat program.

Do you see now while I half-joking refer to São Paulo as “Sambodia”? You, too, can live in a culture-starved Third World desert of the real with a First World cost of living!

O documento Estado Mundial das Cidades 2008/2009, apresentado nesta quarta-feira, cita o desemprego e o declínio dos salários nas áreas urbanas como algumas das razões para esse desempenho.

State of the World’s Cities, 2008-2009, published 23 October, cites unemployment and declining salaries in urban areas as among the factors explaining this finding.

Yes, I know. I read the press release. Tell me something I don’t know.

O relatório utiliza o coeficiente Gini (indicador que mede a concentração de renda de um país e indica desigualdade maior à medida que se aproxima de 1) para medir o nível de igualdade das cidades.

The report uses the GINI coefficient (an indicator that measures the concentration of wealth in a nation, indicating greater income disparity as it approaches 1) to measure the level of equality of the world’s cities.