BRAZIL: President Dilma Rousseff announces "Brazil Without Misery" program that aims to raise more than 16 million people above the level of extreme poverty

Record ID: 346074

  • Title: BRAZIL: President Dilma Rousseff announces "Brazil Without Misery" program that aims to raise more than 16 million people above the level of extreme poverty
  • Date: 3rd June 2011
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF WOMAN WASHING CLOTHES VARIOUS OF SLUM RESIDENTS ON DOORSTEP OF THEIR SHACK
  • Embargoed: 18th June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Brazil, Brazil
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA5IRVW8OL7CAWSAN0G7S5HVTVK
  • Story Text: President Dilma Rousseff launched an ambitious plan on Thursday (June 2) to eliminate dire poverty in Brazil within four years by lifting more than 16 million people from conditions of "misery."
    The "Brazil Without Misery" program is the signature policy of the former leftist guerrilla's first term, her advisers said, fulfilling one of the key promises she made in her campaign for the presidency last year.
    According to Rousseff, the success of the Bolsa Familia family stipend program under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which helped lift about 20 million people into a thriving lower middle class, showed that cutting poverty was a crucial part of Brazil's economic success.
    She said that despite the strides Brazil has made in recent years, with brisk growth rates that have pushed it up the ranks of the world's largest economies, it still faced a "crisis" of poverty that was more serious than any financial crisis.
    "We can't forget that the most permanent, challenging and harrowing crisis is having chronic poverty in this country," she told the audience at a ceremony in the capital Brasilia.
    The new program aims to raise 16.2 million people above the level of extreme poverty, defined as an income of less than 70 reais ($44) per month, through a multi-pronged approach of expanded financial aid, improved education, access to water and energy, as well as job training.
    The Bolsa Familia program, which gives a monthly stipend to families based on their children's school attendance, will be expanded to another 800,000 families, officials said. The program, which has been praised by the World Bank and copied by other developing countries, already reaches more than a quarter of Brazil's 190 million population.
    Officials say poor families will also be provided with education and job training under the program, noting that 40 percent of those in extreme poverty are under the age of 14.
    The new anti-poverty drive will also quadruple the number of poor rural farmers who benefit from government food purchases and payments of up to 2,400 reais every six months to improve their productivity.
    The Bolsa Familia program has been widely praised for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. While critics say it creates dependency on state handouts, the program stands in stark contrast to previous attempts in Brazil to reduce hunger that were bogged down by food distribution problems and theft.
    Poorer voters, millions of whom benefited from rapid economic growth and an expanded anti-poverty program under Lula, are the main electoral base for Rousseff's center-left Workers' Party.
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