Brazil has been tackling problems of income inequality despite high rates of growth. Its GDP (gross domestic product) growth in 2010 was 7.5%. In recent decades, there has been a decline in inequality for the country as a whole. Brazil’s GINI coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has slowly decreased from in 0.596 in 2001 to 0.543 in 2009. However, the numbers still point to a rather significant problem of income disparity.