Category: South America

Overall, the living conditions of the Brazilian population have improved significantly in the last 20 years, and the poverty figures have also been significantly reduced. This is thanks, among other things, to extensive investments in the energy, housing, transport and urban development sectors, which were carried out as part of the program to accelerate growth under the governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (from 2002) and his successor Dilma Rousseff (from 2011) have been planned and tackled. The proportion of extremely poor people who live according to the World Bank criteria on less than 1.25 US dollars a day has been reduced from 17 percent in 1993 to 5 percent in 2012 – making Brazil a central Millennium Development Goal, the reduction of poverty, reached ahead of schedule. The gross domestic product per capita in 2013 was 11,300 US dollars, twice as high as the average for middle-income countries (according to the World Bank: 4721 US dollars).

Despite these advances, around 10 million people were still living in extreme poverty and 31 million Brazilians (16 percent of the population) in relative poverty in 2012, which means that they have far less than the average income. The proportion of the poor is particularly high in the north-east and north as well as in the favelas, the slum areas of the large metropolises (236.3), which still exist in large numbers in regions with generally “good” living conditions. Not least because of these pronounced social disparities, large cities such as Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo continue to have massive problems with crime, drug offenses and gang structures. Reducing the poverty rate and the unequal distribution of income within Brazilian society through infrastructure measures and improving social and health services will have to remain high on the government’s agenda if they exacerbate the social conflicts that occurred in the context of the 2014 World Cup articulated, would like to counteract and strengthen social coherence. For more information about the continent of South America, please check a2zgov.com.