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Brazil handed out so much cash to people during Covid that poverty is nearing historic low

Brazil implemented one of the most ambitious social programs ever undertaken, giving 66 million people 600 reais a month, a shocking shift under President Jair Bolsonaro.

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Brasilia: Brazil, which has suffered one of the world’s worst pandemic tolls, has responded to the crisis by distributing so much cash directly to citizens that poverty and inequality are approaching national historic lows.

Some 66 million people, 30% of the population, have been getting 600 reais ($110) a month, making it the most ambitious social program ever undertaken in Brazil, a shocking shift under President Jair Bolsonaro who railed against welfare, dismissed the virus — and now finds himself newly popular.

The government hasn’t published its own figures yet but data from the Getulio Vargas Foundation, one of Brazil’s top universities, show that those living on less than $1.9 a day fell to 3.3% in June from 8% last year, and those below the poverty line were at 21.7% compared with 25.6%. Both represent 16-year lows.

Economist Daniel Duque, the main investigator, said poverty has, in fact, hit the lowest rate since data collection began 40 years ago but a shift in definitions in 2004 makes direct comparison before then slightly complicated. He added that unpublished measurements from July and August show that inequality calculated by the so-called Gini coefficient fell below 0.5 for the first time ever.

In other words, as Covid-19 has killed some 122,000 Brazilians, it has paradoxically driven down poverty and inequality, at least in the short term, and also placed government welfare at the heart of political debate, like a decade ago with the “Bolsa Familia” program that lifted millions. The issue will reverberate in November’s local elections, a dry run for the presidency in 2022.

Duque says it’s as if Brazil had suddenly created a massive basic-income program. He believes it won’t be possible to end it soon: “The population will surely demand more types of programs like this, and we can’t run the risk of a massive drop-off.”

In fact, the government has begun paring it back. On Tuesday, Bolsonaro announced that handouts would be halved for the remainder of the year. And while he promised to make some form of stipend permanent he hasn’t indicated how he will pay for it.

On Wednesday, the president of Brazil’s Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, said the emergency subsidies have been effective but need to end rather than turn into a new policy.

“We had a detour,” he told Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker at the Emerging & Frontier Forum 2020. “We were one of the emerging market countries that spent the most money. We thought that was important and it was very efficient. But we need to go back to the original plan.”

He added, “In the last few days, the market has been punishing Brazil very badly. The community understands that we need to go back to the plan, we need to spend in a responsible way.”

Economists agree that the approach is unsustainable. Brazil is headed to its largest primary deficit ever of over 11% of GDP this year, and “the challenge is, how do you unwind from this?” says Christopher Garman, managing director for the Americas at Eurasia Group. “There is no free lunch.”


Also read: Brazil is a Covid mess but its economy is still outperforming


Markets agree. Last week, investors engaged in a massive selloff of Brazilian assets after Bolsonaro suggested he might be willing to exceed constitutional spending caps to finance permanent stipends. The real slid more than 2.2% to 5.6320 per dollar, while Brazilian stocks fell 2.7%, the most in emerging markets. Both are still recovering.

This is due to the astronomical price of the program, known commonly as the “coronavoucher,” 50 billion reais ($9.3 billion) a month through August. It cost in five months what Bolsa Familia — created by former President Luiz Inacio Da Silva, or Lula — spent in eight years. That plan gives out $35 per month, reaching some 14 million families this year.

The coronavoucher, which accounts for nearly half of Bolsonaro’s recovery package, has driven up his popularity, especially with the poor.

Jose Carlos Alves, 56, who sells souvenirs on the outskirts of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, says the $110 each month have shifted his politics as he faces more months without tourists or sales. Once loyal to Lula’s long-ruling Workers’ Party, he says the aid “shows Bolsonaro cares and now has my vote in 2022.”

Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who advised lawmakers on the legislation for emergency aid, said this is a wider phenomenon: “Bolsonaro has realized the obvious: Brazil is a poor country with lots of poor people and if you give them cash transfers you’ll get their votes.”

Before the pandemic, Brazil had two years of recession followed by a very slow recovery, increasing poverty. More than a third of the country is on some kind of social benefit.

Bolsonaro, 65, a self-described right-winger who accused past administrations of running a “proletariat dictatorship,” saw his approval rating rise to 37% in a recent poll by Datafolha from 32% in June. Among Brazil’s lowest earners, it rose to 35% from 22%.

The government stimulus, which represents about 7% of GDP, is widely credited with saving Brazil from a grimmer outcome, although the economy is expected to contract more than 5% this year — less disastrous than Mexico and Argentina which could contract by some 10% each.

Even as the virus is spreading hunger from the U.S. to the Saharan Desert, many governments face the same challenge: how to pare back pandemic emergency spending without choking off fragile economic recoveries.

The U.S. also responded to the virus with the most generous social benefits in its history, including a $600-a-week top-up for unemployment payments, that increased average incomes. That program expired in July and lawmakers are still arguing over an extension, even as economists warn that it’s too early to withdraw budget support.

In Europe, France, Germany, Italy and others are considering extending payroll aid for those out of work while the U.K. is planning to phase it out in October.

The coronavoucher in Brazil has raised questions of how best to deal with grinding economic vulnerability, whether Bolsonaro is exploiting cash stipends to stay in office — and whether opposing the handouts to defeat him is acceptable.

“People have a right to be concerned about Bolsonaro’s populist inclinations and his ability to blow things up if he wants to,” De Bolle said. “They are not right to be calling for fiscal adjustment now. Brazil has an epidemic that’s completely out of control with a lot of people that, had they not received an emergency basic income program, would have probably died.”-Bloomberg


Also read: India’s Covid fatality rate among lowest in world at 1.76%, says health ministry


 

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Bolsonaro hates poor people and initially he strongly opposed the coronavirus emergency relief. The stimulus was an idea created and pushed by opposition parties and politicians. However the ignorant and uninformed Brazilian masses wrongly attributed the idea to Bolsonaro, and once he noticed his rise in popularity, he partially embraced and “stole” the idea, talking about it as if it was his – though he still did everything he could to drop the monthly stimulus from 600 reais to 400 or 300 reais from the beginning, and his failure in doing so was a victory of the opposition.

    I have no idea where the writers of this article got the idea that poverty and inequality in Brazil are on historic lows, when it’s quite the opposite for anyone living here. This Daniel Duque economist you interviewed is very likely biased and a supporter of Bolsonaro’s government (not surprising, being an economist the guy is probably a neoliberal). Since the beginning of the pandemic the rich have been getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, even with the stimulus. What little is left of the middle class have been hit the hardest, and everyone is struggling – it’s true that without the coronavirus relief many people would have probably starved, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing better than before the pandemic which the article seems to imply. The BRL exchange rate which was already in a downward trend has nosedived since the pandemics began, not only against the USD but against pretty much all currencies, thanks to Bolsonaro’s incompetence and neoliberal bias (he wants BRL devalued to favour exports, but that doesn’t work because Brazil depends too much on imports).

    Now since this month started, food prices in Brazil have been skyrocketing to the point that the relief fund is becoming moot and the poor are facing hunger. The main reason being that the BRL is so undervalued that food producers are exporting everything they make. But since the food producing elite are Bolsonaro’s buddies, he started blaming retailers for being greedy (supermarkets and convenience stores – their profit margins for staple food are usually pretty low already), and blaming the poor for “eating too much” because of the stimulus (in other words, “useless eaters”! Where we heard that before hmmmm?). That’s the kind of guy Bolsonaro really is, and like usual he barks the wrong tree to diverge attention.

  2. DEEP POVERTY IN BRAZIL IS ONE OF THE
    WORST IN THE WORLD, WITH OR
    WITHOUT THE RELIEF FUND OF US$ 130.oo
    A MONTH. CORRUPTION IS HIGH AND
    OVERSPEEAD, A LOST COUNTRY , PLUS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE AMAZON FOREST
    IN A FAST PACE. THE WORLD WILL PAY THE HIGH PRICE, INDEED, NO DOUBT.

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