Pobreza na Amazônia: o caso do município de Manaus (Amazonas) no período 2000 a 2010

Abstract

Discussions about poverty have been present in the field of social studies for many decades, both in rich and poor countries. In developing countries, when hundreds of thousands of people were found to be living in poverty, there was an intensification of research aimed at reducing poverty. Amartya Sen, in the 1980s, brought up the discussion about the multidimensional approach to poverty as opposed to the unidimensional one (which focuses on monetary income), a fact that contributed to the advancement of the theories and methodologies of both approaches. In Brazil, the focus of studies on the most economically developed regions is notorious. Thus, regions such as the Amazon suffer from a lack of research on this topic. In this scenario, the present research, using the onedimensional approach, seeks to analyze the evolution of poverty in the city of Manaus from 2000 to 2010. Thus, microdata from the Demographic Censuses handled with the aid of the R program were used. the poverty line was used based on the methodology of the Institute of Labor and Society Studies (IETS). To calculate the number of poor individuals, the indicators used were the H-index (headcount index) and the poverty gap (IHP). With the analysis of the general characteristics of the population, there is an increase in population, an improvement in the level of education of the inhabitants and in the percentage of employed people with a formal contract. The H Index shows that, in the analyzed period, the extent of poverty fell by 12.5%. As for the gaps, there is an increase in the total income gap and a reduction in the average income gap. The average gap in relation to the poverty line shows a reduction in the intensity of poverty in the city of Manaus.