DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Poverty and Inequality – Key Campaign Issues

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 31 2001 (IPS) - Poverty and inequality will be the key issues in the campaign for the October 2002 elections in Brazil, as signalled by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s statement that social, rather than economic, questions would be the decisive factor in the election of his successor.

Another indication of that is that the ministers of Education and Health, Paulo Renato Souza and José Serra, have been mentioned as possible presidential candidates.

But persistently negative indicators confirmed this month by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report 2001 leave Latin America’s giant and its government in a bad light.

Twenty-two percent of the population of Brazil, or 37 million people, live below the poverty line, earning less than two dollars a day, while 15.3 million scrape by on less than one dollar a day. In addition, the richest 10 percent of the population takes 46.7 percent of national income.

But some local experts in Brazil work with slightly different statistics. Marcelo Neri, the head of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Centre on Social Policies in Rio de Janeiro, estimates that 50 million Brazilians live in extreme poverty, earning less than 32 dollars a month.

A slight redistribution of income, involving a contribution of just six dollars a month by the remaining 120 million Brazilians, could eradicate poverty in the country in one year, according to Neri.

But in order for that to happen, resources would have to be reallotted, with a greater proportion earmarked for “the poorest of the poor,” said the economist, who was interviewed by several newspapers on the release of his report “The Map of the End of Hunger”.

The total contribution needed would be equivalent to just a small part of the budget currently assigned to social areas, which amounts to 20.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), said Neri.

But while that percentage is the highest in Latin America, inefficient and inadequate use of resources means the funds are not effective in reducing poverty and inequality, agree local and international researchers.

In some cases, the funding is even counterproductive. For example, heavy investment in the country’s public universities, which charge no tuition, and where most of the students come from the middle and upper socioeconomic levels, actually contributes to perpetuating inequality, since the public universities are the country’s best.

The public universities’ strict entrance exams put the poor at a disadvantage due to the often below standard primary and secondary school educations they receive and their inability to afford extracurricular courses preparing students for the exams.

Hence, if they aspire to higher education, they must pay to study at the less demanding and lower quality private colleges, which they are also unable to afford.

Concentrating funding in the social security system is a grave mistake, said Neri, because it favours the elderly and formal sector workers, who already enjoy the benefits of a minimum salary, retirement funds and severance pay.

A full 56 percent of Brazil’s extreme poor, meanwhile, belong to families headed by informal sector workers, who have no social protection whatsoever. And it is the children and teenagers who are most affected by poverty.

To effectively combat the problem, Neri suggested that authorities set annual targets for poverty reduction, as is done with inflation, in order to boost understanding of the issue and promote social awareness.

Such goals would be feasible whether or not the economy is growing, because income redistribution is more effective in achieving such targets, since it reduces inequality, said Neri.

“The Map of the End of Hunger” pinpointed Maranhao, in northern Brazil, as the state with the highest proportion of the population living in absolute poverty. At the other extreme appears Sao Paulo, the most industrialised state.

The low proportion of peasant farmers who are able to retire with a social security pension means the largely rural Maranhao has more people living in extreme poverty than even poorer states in the northeast.

Extreme poverty is reflected in the high prevalence of modern- day slave labour in the state. Cases of employees submitted to inhumane, unpaid working conditions on rural estates and in coal- mines are frequently reported.

Stories of recruiters of slave labour attracting workers with false promises and later holding them captive on the pretext that they owe their employeers for food, lodging and working tools are well-known in Maranhao as well as neighbouring states like Para.

But “people fall for deceptive job offers because of the lack of work and food,” Ivonete da Silva Souza, secretary of the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Açailandia, a municipality of 90,000 people in the south of Maranhao, told IPS.

Hunger and inadequate housing or homelessness figure prominently in the lives of the thousands of poor who are drawn to the city by the scarce jobs offered by the steelworks operating in the region for the past two decades.

Extreme poverty also entails “a lack of citizenship rights,” since many have no birth certificate or identity documents. In other words, they do not legally exist. In addition, most of them are illiterate, the activist pointed out.

Souza, 26, is studying psychology in the nearby town of Imperatriz, an hour away by bus, and is herself an example of the extreme efforts needed to overcome poverty. Getting her first job at the age of nine, she has worked as a domestic, a nanny and a secretary to a judge, while continuing her schooling.

The daughter of a poor peasant farmer and an illiterate mother who had nine children, Souza became a social activist at the age of 16 due to her indignation at seeing so many of her friends forced to resort to prostitution to survive.