Brazil On Verge Of Ending Extreme Poverty, Claims Rousseff
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Nearly 2.5 million Brazilians living in poverty will receive a 70 reais ($35) monthly stipend from the government starting from March 18, reported Reuters on Tuesday, after President Dilma Rousseff signed an expansion for the “Bolsa Familia”, or Family Grant, program – the country’s flagship social program for the past decade.
Nearly 2.5 million Brazilians living in poverty will receive a 70 reais ($35) monthly stipend from the government starting from March 18, reported Reuters on Tuesday, after President Dilma Rousseff signed an expansion for the “Bolsa Familia”, or Family Grant, program – the country’s flagship social program for the past decade.
According to Rousseff, the new rules would cost the government an additional $396 million this year; though as many as 38 million people would be pulled out from poverty since the program’s inception in 2003.
More than 48 million Brazilians, or one quarter of the population, are now registered for numerous social programs introduced by Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which in total will cost the federal government over $12.2 billion this year, inclusive of the expanded program.
Rousseff said she has almost met her anti-poverty target halfway through her four-year term, even though roughly 700,000 families who still live in extreme poverty have yet to register on government social programs.
“We are turning the page on our long history of social exclusion that had perverse roots in slavery,” Rousseff said, as cited by Reuters.
[quote]”The state will have to go and find them (those who have yet to register) to include them before they come knocking on our door,” she added. “But the most difficult part has been done. Soon there will be no Brazilians steeped in extreme poverty.”[/quote]Related: 35 Million Brazilians Escaped Poverty Over Last Decade: Study
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The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 a day. Under the old rules, only families with children under 15 were eligible for the government payments.
Rousseff said that her government will now focus on improving access to public services for poorer Brazilians, extending school hours for their children, and ensuring they have electricity, water, sewers and basic housing.
Critics however say that her latest move was to compensate for her failure to deliver strong economic growth ahead of a possible re-election bid in 2014.
Nonetheless, the social programs introduced by the government have thus far been effective in reducing the poverty rate, with a study last year showing that at least 53 percent of Brazil’s population – 104 million Brazilians – were now part of the nation’s middle class, compared to just 38 percent a decade ago.
“If Brazil’s middle class formed a country, it would be the 12th largest, behind Mexico,” told Strategic Affairs Secretary Wellington Moreira Franco to Folha De S. Paulo last year.
[quote]The expansion of the middle class resulted from a process of (economic) growth combined with a reduction of inequality,” the government study found. “”With this combination, the shrinking of the lower class was more intense than the expansion of the upper class.”[/quote]
