Poverty in Brazil has tripled in 2021, according to the Getulio Vargas foundation nearly 17 million of Brazil’s population were dragged into poverty in the first quarter of the year by the brutal effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Researchers estimate that 12.8 percent of Brazil’s population, some 27 million people, are now living below the poverty line of 246 reais ($ 43,95 US) a month, the most since the series began a decade ago.
The cut in financial aid in the last four months has hit Brazilians.
“We need solutions that allow people to comply with the social distancing and stay at home. In these four months without assistance, we saw an increase in poverty,” said Marcelo Nery, head of Getulio Vargas foundation.
From April to December, almost 66 million other Brazilians received the government’s most generous cash transfer program ever, emergency aid to help the most vulnerable through the pandemic.
The emergency aid softened the economic blow of the coronavirus, boosted President Jair Bolsonaro’s popularity and beat back poverty – but its expiration at the end of 2020 is unraveling many of those effects.
“The pandemic served to make it worse and show the worst face of hunger to all,” said Rodrigo Afonso, director of NGO Acao da Cidadania (Citizenship Action), which distributes bags of food in Rio de Janeiro’s slums.
With an eye on next year’s presidential election, Bolsonaro has been so keen to extend the aid program, even if it wreaks havoc on the public finances.
The new aid package, starting in April, will provide four monthly transfers of an average of 250 reais ($ 44,66 US) to a narrower set of informal workers.