Interesting story: Brazilian cash "handout" program working wonders for the poor [View all]

[kevinbgoode1]

From the Globe and Mail:

Ten years ago, Brazil set out to do something that few countries have ever overtly attempted: become more equal. The undertaking was unusual, but even more remarkable was the outcome: measurable success. Brazil has in the past decade moved people out of poverty on an unprecedented scale – the standard of living improved so much for 22 million that they are no longer considered “poor.” Millions more living on the knife-edge of starvation in drought-ridden expanses of the interior are still poor but vastly better off. Between 2003 and 2009, incomes of the poorest Brazilians grew seven times those of rich citizens.

Teresa Campello, who heads the Ministry of Social Development and the Fight Against Hunger – and who projects an electric enthusiasm for her job difficult to imagine in a Canadian cabinet minister – rattles off the statistics: Infant mortality has fallen by 40 per cent in 10 years – one of the most dramatic declines ever seen anywhere – and the fall is sharpest in poorest areas; school enrolment sits at nearly 100 per cent, and kids who get the grant now graduate at nearly twice the rate of kids who don’t; research shows that women given the grant have greater decision-making power and more equitable relations with their partners, if they have one.

And at a time when Brazil’s economy was booming – traditionally a guarantee that the gulf between rich and poor would get even wider – inequality, for the first time ever, declined. Brazil went from being the world’s third most unequal country to the 15th between 2001 and 2012.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/what-would-robin-hood-do-how-cash-handouts-are-remaking-lives-in-brazil/article16113695/?click=tglobe