Social Change, Industrialization, and the Service Economy in São Paulo, 1950-2020 - Hardcover

by Francisco Vidal Luna (Author), Herbert S. Klein (Author)

In the 1950s-80s, Brazil built one of the most advanced industrial networks among the "developing" countries, initially concentrated in the state of São Paulo. But from the 1980s, decentralization of industry spread to other states reducing São Paulo's relative importance in the country's industrial product. This volume draws on social, economic, and demographic data to document the accelerated industrialization of the state and its subsequent shift to a service economy amidst worsening social and economic inequality.

Through its cultural institutions, universities, banking, and corporate sectors, the municipality of São Paulo would become a world metropolis. At the same time, given its rapid growth from 2 million to 12 million residents in this period, São Paulo dealt with problems of distribution, housing, and governance. This significant volume elucidates these and other trends during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and will be an invaluable reference for scholars of history, policy, and the economy in Latin America.

Author Biography

Francisco Vidal Luna is Professor of Economics at Universidade de São Paulo. Herbert S. Klein is the Gouveneur Morris Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and Research Fellow and Curator at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Their previous volumes with Stanford University Press are Slavery and the Economy of São Paolo, 1750-1850 (2003) and An Economic and Demographic History of São Paulo, 1850-1950 (2018).