Productivity, Wages, and Labor Politics in Brazil, 1945–1962

Abstract

After World War II Brazil experienced exceptionally high economic growth, ranking tenth among the largest economies by 1960. Yet evidence shows that real wages lagged far behind productivity, especially from 1956, the heyday of “developmentalism”—an economic ideology aimed at state-led, accelerated industrialization, with foreign and domestic private capital as active partners. The outcome diverged from that of the “social compact for growth,” the cornerstone of the “golden age” in Europe and Japan. A key reason was that in Brazil left-wingers controlled the main trade unions and pushed an agenda of social reform that was widely rejected by industrialists.