Crescimento econômico, desenvolvimento socioeconômico e dotação de recursos naturais versus armadilha da pobreza: evidências para Amazônia Legal nas últimas duas décadas (1992-2014).

Abstract

From Historical experience has shown that greater reductions in poverty occurred in countries experiencing long periods of sustained economic growth, reinforcing the idea that it would be good for the poor; even better if growth is accompanied by progressive distributional change. In this sense, the pro-poor growth theory has received 'new' attention, noting that increases in income levels alleviate poverty, although economic growth may be more or less effective in doing so, depending on the conditions of each locality, In this way, some countries, especially LDCs that are 'trapped' by structural difficulties, present a situation that has been defined as a 'poverty trap', defined as a self-reinforcing mechanism based on the existence of vicious cycles, leading to persistent incidence poverty and low rates of sustained growth between generations. In addition, the thesis on the causal relationship between the condition of poverty and environmental degradation was disseminated, where greater pressure on the natural resource base would lead to a reinforcement of the poverty trap. In this context, the Legal Amazon has reproduced a peculiar conjuncture, because in this region, the population of the states maintains very high levels of poverty and low quality of life, characterized by a temporal stability, which does not reflect the various transformations that the economy has been going through of the region over the last decades. There is growth from the exploitation of the abundance of its natural resources, in the midst of chronic poverty and the absence of various attempts by the State to promote the development of the region. Thus, analyzing the period from 1992 to 2014, based on PNAD data, a dynamic regression model for poverty was applied; models of bivariate causalities. The results suggested that inequality has minimized the effectiveness of economic growth in reducing poverty, thus provoking growth characterized as not pro-poor; in addition, the persistence of the poverty condition was evidenced given the auto-regressive behavior, and it may consider the existence of a kind of trap. In addition, bi-directional causality of poverty in relation to growth, inequality and deforestation was verified, as well as the latter towards growth and inequality, as well as the unidirectional causality of inequality to growth. Thus, the dynamics examined reveal that the positive variation of growth would be associated with the expansion of deforestation in the previous period, generating income growth in the present and, in turn, reducing poverty and inequality, further expanding deforestation in the later period, the level of poverty and income inequality caused by the increase in income, signaling a kind of extended vicious cycle in which the expansion of deforestation in the past periods, provoke a rise in the level of income and a reduction of poverty and inequality in the present , and these, in turn, provoke 'temporary stagnation of deforestation for a period, all of which will expand in the later period, further increasing the level of deforestation, in the form of reinforcing the poverty trap.