This paper contributes to the empirical literature about the Brazilian regional disequilibrium, once it examines, in the post-Real Plan period, the economic performance of each region of the country in terms of pro-poor growth - growth with reduced inequality - and of the social welfare. To this, it is used the methodology present in Kakwani, Neri and Son (2006) to evaluate the behavior of social welfare from the distributions of familiar income and wage income in each region. Furthermore, it is investigated the contribution of labor market indicators in the performance of regions. In general, the results indicate that the greatest impacts on employment income and on social welfare were due to the labour force participation rate, and mainly, to increased productivity of workers from 2003, which in turn, were mainly motivated by increases in the average returns from the education of employed persons. However, these gains were not sufficient to establish a pattern of growth more strongly pro-poor in the North and Northeast, which could have contributed to a closer in terms of income and welfare of these regions for other Brazilian regions.
inequality; growth pro-poor; poverty; labor market
