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

In the 1950s-80s, Brazil built one of the most advanced industrial networks among the developing countries, initially concentrated in the state of Sao Paulo. But from the 1980s, decentralization of industry spread to other states reducing Sao 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 Sao Paulo would become a world metropolis. At the same time, given its rapid growth from 2 million to 12 million residents in this period, Sao 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.