Anti-Poverty Policies in Brazil: Reviewing the Past Ten Years
| Author | Christina W. Andrews |
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852304046202 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Anti-poverty policies in Brazil: reviewing the past ten years
Christina W. Andrews
Abstract
This article reviews the main anti-poverty policies implemented in Brazil from the
early 1990s to the early 2000s. These include focused and universal policies —
such as education and health care — as well as the rural development, a ‘middle
ground’ policy. Though the inter-municipal consortium, a new institutional
arrangement gathering municipalities together, has emerged as a promising
policy implementation tool, anti-poverty policies have faced implementation diffi-
culties. Lack of coordination between different programs, even within the same
policy area, has impaired their effectiveness. As a consequence, compensatory
programs, based on monetary transfers to poor families, which face fewer imple-
mentation problems, have become the dominant type of anti-poverty policies in
Brazil. Despite these shortcomings, a small Brazilian state, Santa Catarina, was able
to reduce by 46 percent the number of individuals living in poverty in just ten
years. This is a sign that fighting poverty can, after all, be a feasible endeavor.
Introduction
Brazil is not a poor country but has millions of its citizens living in poverty. According
to the United Nations, Brazil is a middle-income country: its GDP per capita in
Purchase Parity Power is estimated to be US$7625/year, ranking 73rd in a list of 173
countries (United Nations Development Program, 2002). However, Brazil has 53
million people living below the poverty line, of which 22 million are considered to be
at the indigence level (Barros et al., 2001). In the past 20 years, the proportion of the
Brazilian population living in poverty has remained between 40 and 45 percent and
the level of inequality has been persistently stable. The main inequality indicators
show Brazil as one of the most unequal societies in the world: the richer 10 percent
hold 40 percent of the country’s wealth, while 40 percent of the poorest control only
Christina W. Andrews is assistant professor at the Department of Public Administration,
Universidade Estadual Paulista ‘Júlio de Mesquita Filho’ (UNESP), Brazil.
Copyright © 2004 IIAS, SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 70(3):477–488 [DOI:10.1177/0020852304046202]
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