NEWS IN ENGLISH – As government moves to end poverty, surveys show who the poorest Brazilians are

05/05/2011 12:12

Carolina Pimentel       ReporterAgência Brasil


Brasilia – As the Brazilian government prepares to rollout its new Brazil Without Misery Plan (“Brasil sem Miséria”), it has made a special effort to discover just exactly who their target public is. And the results are in. The majority of Brazilians who live in extreme poverty are dark-skinned, young and they live in the Northeast [the northeastern region of Brazil consists of the Atlantic seaboard states of Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piaui, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe; all of them located below the mouth of the Amazon River].


Based on a recent survey using preliminary data from the 2010 Census, that was run by the government statistical bureau (“Brazilian Institute ofGeographyand Statistics– IBGE”), and the Institute of Applied Economic Research (“IPEA”), Brasilia decided that the extreme poverty line would be when a family’s monthly income is less than R$70 per person [For the sake of comparison, the United Nations and the World Bank consider extreme poverty to be less than $1.25 per day, which works out to R$60 per month].

 

With the survey numbers in hand, this week the Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Combat announced that there are16.2 million Brazilians, equivalent to 8.5% of the population, living in extreme poverty. And, out of that total, 70.8% are dark-skinned (“pardos ou pretos”) and 50.9% are less than 19 years of age.
A demographic map based on the IBGE and Ipea surveys reveals that although only 15.6% of the Brazilian population is rural, almost half of the extremely poor (46.7%) live in rural areas. The rest of the poor (53.3%) live in cities (along with the other 84.4% of the population of Brazil).


Out of the total 16.2 million people living in extreme poverty, 9.6 million are in the Northeast; that is, almost 60%. In the Southeast, there are 2.7 million people living in extreme poverty, a number similar to that in the North region where there are 2.65 million poor. The number of poor drops significantly in the South (715,000) and the Central-West (557,000).


The IBGE and Ipea surveys found little difference in gender when the issue was poverty, except that in urban areas there tend to be more poor women, while in rural areas the poor men outnumber the poor women.


In its analysis of the survey data the government emphasized the importance of other factors besides income in describing extreme poverty. For example, it was found that close to 10% of those living in extreme poverty (around 300,000 homes) did not have electricity.

 

"The lower the income, the greater the proportion of people without access to drinking water. The lower the income, the higher the proportion of people without indoor bathrooms. In all cases, in rural areas the situation is worse,” said the president of the IBGE, Eduardo Nunes.


Meanwhile, the Minister of Social Development and Hunger Combat, Tereza Campello, declared that the Dilma Rousseff administration aim of putting an end to extreme poverty in Brazil by the year 2014 was possible.She said the effort would be spearheaded by a series of governmental policies that will include income transfer and professional training, as well as an expansion of the services offered by the state.


Campello explained that the government’s main extreme poverty reduction action program, Brazil Without Misery Plan (“Brasil sem Miséria”), is not really a new program, but rather a new approach based on a more realistic look at the target public. She said that exactly because of the nature of the people they were dealing with, outreach was definitely the name of the game. Very poor people were not going to go to the government, it was going to be necessary for the government to go to them, she said, and at least part of the outreach effort would be possible through existing programs, such as Bolsa Familia.


“The federal government, states and municipalities must work together closely. We are setting up what amounts to a poverty reduction task force,” said Campello, adding that it was expected that over time the extreme poverty line (income of less than R$70 per month) would be adjusted. The minister revealed that the flagship of the poverty reduction effort, the Brazil Without Misery Plan, will go into operation as soon as it is announced by president Dilma Rousseff.


Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English - content modified

Link - Maioria dos miseráveis brasileiros é jovem, negra e nordestina