Desigualdade dos Rendimentos do Trabalho em Unidades Federativas Brasileiras: Revisitando a Hipótese da Curva de Williamson-Kuznets

The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis of the Williamson-Kuznets Curve (CWK) for the inequality of income from work in Brazilian federative units (FUs) from an intra-and inter-regional perspective.For this, parametric econometric estimations were performed with panel data for the period from 1985 to 2018 and non-parametric regressions.The CWK hypothesis is one of the main ones for the relationship between economic growth, income inequality and sectors, which encompasses the perspectives of inequality between individuals and regions, which justifies being revisited.Here, the innovation consists in joining the theories of Kuznets and Williamson in the same methodological framework, starting from the hypothesis that both use the dual economy approach as a basis to explain the joint dynamics of income inequality and economic growth, both advocating a shape close to an "inverted-U".Furthermore, the study incorporates the inter-regional perspective and the crisis context into the analysis, aspects that are still little explored in the literature.The results suggest that the CWK hypothesis is not valid for the FUs in the period under analysis.Furthermore, the impact of industrialization is the opposite of what was expected by the thesis of economic duality and state crises apparently do not influence income inequalities.