Rio de Janeiro (23 June 2014) – Thirty-six million Brazilians have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 2002, when Brazil won its fifth football world championship. This revolution is the result of the country’s social inclusion programs, which are spearheaded by the Bolsa Família Program. The program has been recognized by the United Nations (UN) as a good example of public policy that can reduce social inequalities and win the fight against hunger.

“The whole world is looking at Brazil not only because of the World Cup, but also because of the success of our poverty reduction programs,” said Minister of Social Development Tereza Campello at a press conference today at the João Saldanha Open Media Centre in Rio de Janeiro.

More than good ideas, Brazil has demonstrated concrete results from these programs, said the Minister. “Today there is no more hunger in Brazil other than in isolated groups,” she said. The Social Development Ministry estimates that 300,000 families are not included in the Unified Social Programs Records. “The government is currently trying to locate these families to include them in social programs,” said Minister Campello.

According to the Minister, the results obtained so far dispel some myths regarding Bolsa Família, the first being that women would have more children in order to earn more money from the program. This did not happen: Brazil’s fertility rate has decreased since the start of the program, particularly among Bolsa Família beneficiaries, highlighted Minister Campello. According to data from the national statistics institute IBGE, the fertility rate in Brazil decreased from 2.4 children per woman in 2000 to 1.77 in 2013.

The second myth is that people would spend their cash transfers poorly, but research shows that the funds have been spent primarily on items such as food, clothing, shoes and medicine. 

The third myth is that people would give up working to live off the benefits. “Data show that 70 percent of adult program beneficiaries are actively working,” highlighted the Minister.

Minister Campello noted that child mortality caused by malnutrition has been reduced by 58 percent since 2002. As a result, Brazil has achieved the UN Millennium Development Goal set for 2015 on this metric ahead of schedule, in 2011. 

Created in 2003, Bolsa Família is recognized as the largest conditional cash transfer program in the world. The program transfers income to poor families, which in turn must keep their children in school, ensure their vaccination schedules are up-to-date and commit to prenatal care for pregnant women. The program’s guiding principle is to ensure no Brazilian is living on less than R$ 77 per capita per month. 

The government monitors Bolsa Família beneficiary families, and results show that beneficiary students have lower dropout rates than those from non-beneficiary families. In healthcare, the advancements brought by the program have especially improved the lives of women and children. There has been a 50 percent increase in the use of prenatal care for pregnancies, and 99 percent of Brazilian children are now up-to-date with their vaccination schedules. 

According to the Minister, Bolsa Família currently pays an average of R$ 167 to 14 million families, or about 50 million Brazilians. The total investment required by the program in 2014 will be equivalent to R$ 25 billion, about 0.5 percent of Brazil’s GDP.

The success of Bolsa Família is explained, among other factors, by the fact that resources are transferred directly to households, without intermediaries, through a bank card, and preferably to the women – 93 percent of the beneficiary families have a female head of household. 

In recent years, annual reports from the UN about the end of poverty in the world have highlighted Bolsa Família as an important model to be followed in the fight against hunger and for the reduction of inequalities. The program is cited by the UN as a reference of “accessible policy” in economic terms for developing countries, given its low cost. In Brazil, program investments represents less than 1% of its GDP (of over R$ 4.5 trillion).

Since 2011, Bolsa Família has been part of the Plano Brasil Sem Miséria (Brazil Without Extreme Poverty Plan), an integrated set of more than 100 social programs which brought improvements and adjustments to Bolsa Família and has three main lines of action: guaranteed income for immediate relief of extreme poverty; access to public services to improve education, healthcare and overall citizenship conditions for families; and productive inclusion (rural and urban), to increase skillsets and opportunities for labor and income generation amongst poorer families.

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Key results three years after the launch of the Brazil Without Extreme Poverty Plan:
• 1.2 million enrollments in vocational training courses for lower income citizens (under the Pronatec subprogram geared specifically to Brazil Without Extreme Poverty beneficiaries);
• 3.2 million microcredit operations for Bolsa Família beneficiaries under the Crescer (“Grow”) program;
• 600,000 cisterns installed to provide universal access to water in the semiarid region, under the Água para Todos (“Water for All”) program; and
• 580,000 children from Bolsa Família beneficiary families enrolled in public day care centers, under the Brasil Carinhoso (“Affectionate Brazil”) program.

For additional information, please visit:
www.copa2014.gov.br/cam (Portuguese)
www.copa2014.gov.br/en/cam (English)

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