John Wells

Industrial accumulation and living standards in the long‐run: The São Paulo industrial working class, 1930–75, part i*

This is the first of two articles attempting to contribute to the debate on trends in absolute real incomes amongst propertyless groups in semi‐industrialized countries. The empirical evidence presented in both articles is addressed to evaluating the long‐term trend in the standard of living of industrial working‐class households in one of the principal industrial centres of the capitalist periphery (the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo) between the mid‐1930s and the mid‐1970s. This first article contains a more analytical discussion of the principal factors affecting the living standards of non‐property‐owning groups in poor capitalist countries, experiencing rapid transformations within both their agricultural and industrial sectors. Following this, some of the principal problems which arise in measuring the living standards of poor people in developing countries are briefly reviewed, as well as the solutions adopted and the data sources used in this study of households in the city of Sao Paulo. This first a...

Wages, minimum wages, and income distribution in Brazil: Results from the construction industry

Abstract Critics of post-1964 economic policy in Brazil have argued that the decline of at least 25% in the real value of the government-determined minimum wage between 1964 and 1974 was an important factor accounting for increasing inequality in the size distribution of personal income observed during this period. This paper reports the results of a new test of this proposition, using cross-section and time series wage rate statistics for the Brazilian construction industry. The results suggest that the official minimum wage plays an important signalling role in wage-determination, acting as a standard of reference for the setting of the wage-rates of the least skilled manual workers in the Brazilian construction industry. The results, therefore, confirm the view that minimum wage policy in Brazil is influential in determining the size distribution of earned income.

Structural models of inflation and balance of payments disequilibria in semi-industrialized economies: some implications for stabilization and growth policies

Structural modes of thought about inflation, growth and balance of payments disequilibria consider these phenomena as interrelated problems in political economy, having to do with short- and long-term conflicts in national economic objectives. These could be meaningfully understood or analysed only in terms of historical perspective and in relation to changing world economic conditions.1