Brazil is one of the countries in the world where the differences between those who are rich and those who are poor, are the largest. The richest 10 percent of Brazilians receive 42 percent of the nation’s income, while the poorest 10 percent receive less than 1,2 percent. Roughly one third of the country’s population is considered poor while the extremely poor make up 13 percent.This situation has been the subject of a heated debate in Brazil the last ten years and efforts have been made to reduce the problems relating to poverty.
While poverty in Brazil is perhaps primarily associated with the favelas visible in the country’s metropolitan areas, poverty is in reality a much broader issue. As many as 22,6 percent or 35 million Brazilians live below the poverty line. Over half of these live in urban areas and of these, half do not have canalized water. 68 percent has no garbage collection, 25 percent lack electricity and 78 percent do not have proper sewage connections or septic tanks. Although the health-effects of poverty in Brazil have not been sufficiently studied, the conclusion must nevertheless be that the health effects of living under these circumstances are in fact negative.
While improvements in national living standards has been a primary issue the last decade – for example with a program launched by President Lula to eradicate hunger, long-term strategies to eradicate the actual problems causing poverty has also been discussed and outlined. These discussions has been centered on a few fundamental problems:
1) The degree of schooling affects the degree of poverty. In 74 percent of the poor households, the head of the household has less than four years of schooling.
2) The size of a family affects housholds. As the amount of dependents in the household increases, so does poverty rates.
3) The type of available jobs at hand affects poverty rates. Those Brazilians who are unemployed,self employed and informally employed are more likely to be poor than those who are not. Self-employment is – as is easy to see in Brazil – often an effect of the lack of available jobs. Of self-employed Brazilians, only 20% actually own their own shops and the rest operate out of their homes, vehicles or in public spaces.
The responses to these problems are threefold, with the highest emphasis being on the first:
1) The level of education in poor areas must be raised. In 2003, Lula implemented the "Bolsa Família"-program that gives money directly to impoverished families so as to keep their children in school. Although education is compulsory between the ages of 10 and 14 in Brazil, children from large poor families have traditionally started working from the age of 10 in order to help their parents. Child labor has thus long been a problem in Brazil, despite the fact that work for children under the age of 16 is banned by law.
2) The number of children raised in poverty should ideally be reduced through the promotion of birth control. Since there is a known link between education and number of teenage pregnancies, the raised level of education has been one way to reduce the sizes of poor families.
3) The availability of jobs that pay well should be raised. The idea that poverty can be reduced simply by improving the national economic performance – particularly when guided by economic improvements – has been strong in Brazil. This belief has underlined the reform efforts of the Lula-government and the President’s efforts to improve the economy.
With attention given to efforts in line with these priorities, effects have been highly successful. The number of children who do attend school has increased sharply, partly as a result of increased access to federal funds for schools that enroll a higher number of children. The “Bolsa Familia”-program is furthermore also considered vital in leading to this improvement since families receive additional incentives to send their children to school – something most parents would value in the first place.
Due to positive economic performance, moreover, the Brazilian poverty rates have been falling. Between 2003 and 2008, poverty rates fell sharply and Brazil may achieve social indicators similar to those of developed countries by 2016 if the country is able to maintain the same rate of reduction that characterized this period.
Sources :
Williams, Sandra: Poverty in Brazil. Brazilian Poor Don't Have Equal Access to Education, Employment
Published Jul 6, 2007
URL : http://poverty.suite101.com/ar ticle.cfm/poverty_in_brazil
Social issues in Brazil
URL : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S ocial_issues_in_Brazil