Authors: Brian Wampler, Natasha Borges Sugiyama, and Michael Touchton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 353 pages
Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram
Brazil has the world’s sixth largest number of people with 212 million, representing about 2.7 percent of the current global population of nearly 7.8 billion, after China, India, the United states, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
This democratic nation ranks a very high No.9 worldwide in nominal gross domestic product (GDP) producing nearly $1.85 trillion worth of goods and services in 2019. To provide you some perspective, its economic output was just below that of No.8-ranked Italy with $1.99 trillion, and above that of No.10 Canada with $1.73 trillion in GDP.
What is also impressive about Brazil is that it has the largest economy among 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations, with only one other country – Mexico – having output over $1 trillion. All others in this group have economies of around $400 billion or less.
What really matters, as we well all know, is not how big the economy of a country is, but how much the average resident earns, or more accurately, produces to contribute to the country’s total output. This is called per-capita GDP.
By this measure, the average Brazilian produced $9,321 in 2019, and the country ranked No. 72 among 192 countries and territories in our world today, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. Comparatively, the people of Luxembourg are the most productive and as a consequence, rewarded the most, with the average person enjoying life with $113,200 in 2019.
In this brief book of just around 350 pages, its three authors who have studied and teach about Brazil, write about it as well, providing us a broad socioeconomic picture of this progressive country.
They particularly show us how democratic imperatives – such as economic planning, education, enabling a broad range of work opportunities, health care, job training, and other initiatives and efforts – played important roles in reducing poverty and uplifting Brazilians into prosperity.
We list the chapters of this book below to give you a brief overview of its contents:
Introduction
- Democracy at Work
- Building Pathways for Change
- Research Design, Methods, and variables
- Reducing Poverty: Broadening Access to Income
- Improving Health: Saving Lives
- Empowering Women: Saving Mothers and Enhancing Opportunities
- Educating Societies: Promoting Public Education and Learning
- Pathways at Work: Lessons from Brazil’s Poor Northeast
Conclusion: How Democracy Improves Well-Being
For those seeking answers to questions on how to uplift the people of a country seeking to raise incomes and standards of living, there is much to learn here in this valuable book on how to bring about economic development.
Authors:
Brian Wampler is Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. He is the author of Activating Democracy in Brazil: Popular Participation, Social Justice and Interlocking Institutions (2015) and Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability (2007).
Natasha Borges Sugiyama is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin. She is the author of Diffusion of Good Government: Social Sector Reforms in Brazil (2012).
Michael Touchton is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. He is the co-author with Amanda Johnson, of Salvaging Community: How American Cities Rebuild Closed Military Bases (2019).
