Paper short abstract:

Do impact investing and new public-private partnerships for development hold the key to reducing inequality? This paper will interrogate this question, by exploring how issues of inequality are framed and approached by social investors in Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on recent ethnographic research in São Paulo, Brazil, to examine the practice of impact investing and new forms of private-public partnership (PPP) in the development arena. The global trend for impact investing sees capital investment into social businesses and Bottom of the Pyramid schemes (creating products and services for the poor), in the pursuit of both financial return and social impact. Over the last decade, Brazil has emerged as a regional leader for this trend. The country is now home to a small but diverse social investment market, made up of national and international investment funds, philanthropists and private family offices, and both multilateral and national development agencies (including the Inter-American Development Bank and BNDES, the Brazilian Development Bank). Within this market, PPPs between state agencies and private investors are heralded as the new frontier for development financing, posited on the primacy of market-based solutions to Brazil's enduring development challenges. This paper will discuss the implications of this trend for the issue of inequality. It will explore how diverse investors conceive of the causes and solutions to inequalities in access to housing, healthcare and education - common focus areas for impact investment and social enterprise. Finally, it will ask if PPPs and impact investing models really hold the potential for tackling inequalities in Brazil, when the generation of wealth among private corporate and philanthropic investors continues to depend on enduring structural mechanisms of inequality within the Brazilian - and global - economy.