In the U.S., say the word "welfare" and certain types of people cringe and see hammers and sickles. Admittedly, the same goes for those in richer south Brazil. But even a middle class south Brazilian recognized the need for massive social welfare programs to rid the country of a poverty that even embarrassed people unaffected by it. If there was one thing wealthy Brazilians from Rio to Port Alegre could agree on, it was the African-style poverty in the north and northeast was a rotten shame on an otherwise great country.
While states like Bahia and Para are still home to the bulk of the country's poor, Brazil's "Bolsa Familia" took millions out of no-water, no-sewer, no-shoes poverty.
The sweeping social welfare program launched under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2002. For families to get on the program, children had to be in school, get vaccinations from diseases that were putting needless stresses on hospitals with already lackluster services, and at least had to be looking for a job. They got more money, a little under a hundred dollars more a month, for a piece of society already earning under $200 a month at the time. They took that money and bought more rice, more chicken, more diapers, and the northern half of Brazil suddenly joined the modern era. What once looked like the Congo now started to look a bit more like the Brazil many in the country wished to see.
It's not perfect. But the program never made Brasilia go bust, and it took 22 million people out of the poor house.
The program celebrated its 10 year anniversary this week. And according to the U.N., 6.3% of Brazilians were living on just a dollar a day in 2000. By 2009, it was reduced by half to around 3%.
“There are 50 million reasons to celebrate 10 years of the Bolsa Família,” Minister of Social Development, Tereza Campello, said during a ceremony on Wednesday.
The 50 million figure comes from the 13.8 million households – or 50 million people - who receive the benefit each month.
At the event, Lula remarked how naysayers predicted the program would fail and would be too costly. Lula's chosen successor, President Dilma Rousseff of Lula's Workers' Party, said the program was not a charity. "It's a social tool for tackling inequality. That is the issue. Income is purchasing power.”
Many people in the opposition, including in the media, have said that the social welfare programs have aligned millions of poor Brazilians with the Workers' Party for the foreseeable future, making it next to impossible for other parties to garner presidential votes in the poorer north. Both Lula and Dilma have swept that part of the country for years, all traditional strongholds receptive to populist rhetoric. Under the program, the rhetoric has been coupled with action. And now the staunchest supporters of the Workers' Party live north of Rio de Janeiro.
The people living there have had it much worse.
Over the first 10 years of the program, the average amount of Bolsa Familia benefits increased from R$73.70 to R$152.35 per month, or between $30 and $63 a month in program members' bank accounts as of September 2013. The Brazilian government this year said it will spend R$24 billion ($10 billion) on the Bolsa Familia program, representing 0.46% of Brazil’s GDP.
An October study by the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) showed that the Program was responsible for a decline of 28% in extreme poverty in Brazil in the last decade.
“Enough of speculations and assumptions about this program," said Campello. "We have data, statistics, robust scientific evidence, national and international, to bury the myths and show the effects of this program on the lives of Brazil's poorest.”
Card carrying members of Brazil's massive social welfare program agree to keep their school-aged children in the classroom, with a minimum monthly attendance rate of 85% for kids under 15, 75% for kids in their junior and senior years of high school. According to a Basic Education Census, conducted by a government agency, school performance is better and dropout rates are lower among students receiving government aid.
In high schools, the pass rate among these students is 79.9%, while the national average is 75.2%. Also, the dropout rate is 7% among the program participants compared to 11% for the national average.
According to the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, 68.3% of program participants are eligible to work as of 2011. Of that total, 90% were gainfully employed. According to the 2010 Census by IBGE, 75% of the beneficiaries have a job. And as of March 2013, 290,000 of them started small businesses out of the home.
“Bolsa Familia will exist as long as there is one poor family in the country,” Rousseff said during the ceremony, which will clearly be a key platform for her when she seeks re-election next year. In Brazil today, she said, it is difficult to find a Brazilian unaffected directly or indirectly by the program.
