we expect to find a negative relationship between poverty and this variable it is worth noting that the brazilian economy showed growth in income per capita over the period thus the absolute poverty indicator used is the proportion of poor people this index is frequently used to express income inequality and may be linked to the socalled lorenz curve which is defined by the set of points obtained by plotting income shares against population shares in ascending order on the basis of this curve we then calculate gini coefficients for each of the states between and as discussed in the previous section the relationship between the gini coefficient and poverty must be positive