The study examines a particular set of institutional determinants of inequality, the public pensions. It tests the hypothesis that different rules regarding a maximum limit for the value of benefits in the pension subsystem of public and private sector workers make the system as a whole regressive and contribute disproportionately to inequality in Brazil. Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient of the distribution of family per capita income, as measured by POF 2008/09 it concludes that the State reproduces pre-existing inequalities when it differentiates rules for public and private sector workers. Due to this differentiation of rules, the higher value of pensions of less than 1% of the population contributes to 4% of total inequality.
Income inequality; Public Pensions; INSS; RPPS; RGPS
