This doctoral thesis aims to analyze the chronic Brazilian social inequality, which has vulnerable groups as its greatest victims, through the understanding of the relationship between collection and expenditure of public resources. Through such an approach, we seek to understand the role of the Brazilian state in maintaining and increasing socioeconomic inequalities, especially through the means by which it collects taxes and to whom it preferentially allocates the resources obtained collectively, but whose fruition is disproportionately destined for the highest strata. of society. As a way of establishing legal and democratic control over the collection and expenditure of resources, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 is used and its provision that prohibits discrimination in the enjoyment of rights while, at the same time, determining their progressive realization, prohibition of the regression of the advances obtained and the duty of maximum allocation of available resources for the realization of the rights in question. It is argued in this thesis that such characteristics of socioeconomic and cultural rights correspond to a methodological advance in relation to the usual ways in which Brazilian law has acted to reduce social inequalities, especially through judicialization of fundamental rights to obtain state benefits. Finally, it presents how the measurement of social inequality, especially among vulnerable groups compared to the rest of the population, provides a new tool for legal and non-institutional action for the implementation of public policies aimed at building a fairer society.