‘Family Grant’: benefit can lift up to 3 million out of poverty

Mencius Melo – From Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – Calculations of the economist of the Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Ibre/FGV), Daniel Duque, point out that the new version of the Bolsa Família should help remove up to 3 million people from the condition of extreme poverty and to contribute to expand the mass of income available to families in 2023. The Amazon, according to economist Denise Kassama, due to its own peculiarities, will be positively impacted.

According to information from the IBGE, in the last quarter of 2022 the number of 12.4 million people in extreme poverty was registered, with an income of up to R$208 per month per person in the family nucleus. With the changes in the new program, 21.1 million families now receive an average of R$ 670.33, the highest amount injected into the program since January. In February, it was R$ 606,91. The program’s payments in March exceeded R$14 billion, a record in the history of Bolsa Família. The forecast is that the average amount will exceed R$700 in June.

Distribution

Among the Amazon states that will receive the Bolsa Família by 2021, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in Amazonas there were 17.4% of the households. In Acre, 17.3% of the households, in Pará, 17.5%, in Amapá, 5.9%, in Tocantins, 11.1%, in Rondônia, 5.7%, and in Roraima, 8.0%. The period corresponds to the administration of then president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and was called “Brazil Aid”. With the return of Lula (PT) to power, the program went back to being called by its original name “Bolsa Família”.

Economist Denise Kassama made a social reading of the theme: “It is a social commitment that needs to be maintained and, with this, inject resources into the economy, because the program has the power of the multiplier effect. It is estimated that R$ 1 injected into the economy by Bolsa Família is multiplied by R$5 in income,” he explained. “And with income, the citizen can consume and, with this, make the consumer market turn around and, when consuming, he will generate jobs and income in the primary and intermediary sectors and, thus, successively,” she analyzed.

The economist called attention to the peculiarities of the region. “For our region, which is the Amazon, this is fundamental. We are a region with pockets of immense poverty. We have entire communities that don’t even use money, they work with barter, a system of exchange,” Kassama noted. “This program is welcome, because here we have many isolated communities and our realities are very different from other regions, and even the displacement in the Amazon is different,” she stressed.

Denise Kassama believes that the proposal has a clear objective. “It is a time when the country is making a concentrated effort to get off the hunger map, and I sincerely hope that the government will succeed in this very important cash transfer program,” she said. “In my opinion, the fight against poverty and hunger should be the priority of any government,” she concluded.

Counterparts

Redimensioned in the new third term of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), the Bolsa Família is considered one of the largest income transfer programs in the world.

The social program demands compliance with rules. It requires school attendance for children and teenagers between 4 and 17 years old; prenatal care for pregnant women; nutritional monitoring (weight and height) for children up to six years old; and keeping the vaccination booklet up to date.