Brazil is experiencing a booming economy, with unemployment at historically low levels and strong activity in several sectors.
for example. The result was released this Friday (29) by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) and .
However, when the comparison is made with the rest of the world, a worrying warning emerges: the income produced by each Brazilian grows at a much slower pace than that observed in other economies.
The indicator used to measure this delay is GDP per capita, which represents the value of everything the country produces in a year divided by the number of inhabitants.
Although it does not reflect the real income of each citizen, it reveals the size of the economy in relation to the population and is one of the most used measures to compare countries. When it grows, in general, it means more employment, consumption and quality of life.
Brazil lags behind in decades of global comparison
Between 1980 and 2025, global GDP per capita rose from around US$3,300 to just over US$26,000. In the same period, Brazil had a more timid advance: it went from US$4,400 to US$23,300, according to data from the IMF (International Monetary Fund).
“What draws attention is that we are growing less than developed countries. The logic would be for Brazil to grow more than the United States, for example. We are further behind and have more room to grow and reach the level they are at”, highlighted Marcos Mendes, associate researcher at Insper.
A study by the chief economist at MB Investimentos, Sérgio Vale, points to a drop in Brazil’s growth rate precisely from the 1980s onwards.
According to him, “this can largely be explained at that time, in the 1980s, by the crisis we experienced at the end of the dictatorship, every moment of exchange for growth dependent on investment from external loans, with an increase in interest rates in the American economy.”
Vale added that the country “made an option for a type of growth that was not sustainable” and that, along with this, came .
“When we come out of this process, we are still having difficulty rescuing more sustainable growth in the Brazilian economy. We are very much in that familiar situation”, he stated.
Fiscal imbalance and low productivity as structural causes
Economists are practically unanimous about the causes of this disparity: little investment and a tax environment that is still very complex.
Brazil’s disadvantage became even more evident in 2015, when the country faced a severe recession. Between 2015 and 2016, national GDP fell by 3% in each year.
These numbers reflect the imbalance in public accounts: when the government injects a lot of money into the economy, it puts pressure on demand and prices, driving inflation.
Zeina Latif, economist and managing partner of Gibraltar, highlighted that the lack of predictability directly affects investment decisions and people’s daily lives.
“People are sometimes afraid to make a plan, especially in this current context of high debt. It’s difficult to plan in Brazil,” he said.
The economists interviewed by the report emphasize that excessive State intervention in the economy opens the door to more corruption, by creating selective benefits that distort economic policy.
Ways to overcome delay
According to experts, the lesson that can be learned from the economies that are ahead of Brazil is that surpassing the average income range required investment in human capital — that is, in education —.
“The fiscal adjustment agenda is very important. It’s not just because it needs to contain the growth of public debt, but we need to rescue the state’s capacity for action,” said Zeina.
Sérgio Vale argues that the country needs “greater fiscal consolidation in the Brazilian economy, a continuity of economic reforms, a greater focus on investment in the younger population, especially in the child population”, also including “heavier investment in education”.
The economist also highlighted that countries with strong economic growth were those that opened up more intensely to the world, suggesting that and, consequently, the performance of GDP per capita.
