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Poverty & Hunger

Federative Republic of

Brazil

In the early years of the 21st Century

Description: Description: Description: Brazil

CAUTION:  The following links and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Brazil in the early years of the 21st Century.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated, misleading or even false.   No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE

Students

If you are looking for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this page and others to see which aspects of poverty are of particular interest to you.  You might be interested in exploring the relationship between distribution of labor and per-capita GDP, for example.  Perhaps your paper could focus on life expectancy or infant mortality.  Other factors of interest might be unemployment, literacy, access to basic services, etc.  On the other hand, you might choose to include some of the possible outgrowths of poverty such as Human Trafficking, Street Children, or even Prostitution.  There is a lot to the subject of Poverty.  Scan other countries as well as this one.  Draw comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions.  Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources that are available on-line.

Teachers

Check out some of the Resources for Teachers attached to this website.

*** Extreme Weather ***

According to a recent article from MSN, heavy rainfall caused landslides and submerged neighborhoods, a hospital, a public transit line, and a highway, resulting in more than a dozen deaths. Another article from China Daily reports that the Amazon basin is experiencing its lowest rainfall in years, which is having a devastating impact on the region’s rivers and biodiversity. Finally, BNamericas reports that Brazil is investing $1.3 billion in 2024 to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events.  Microsoft BING Copilot

World Bank Climate & Develoment Reports

Brazil Country Climate and Development Report, World Bank Group, 4 May 2023

openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/39782

[accessed 11 Dec 2024]

The impacts of global climate change risks and local practices on the Amazon and Cerrado biomes are of particular concern, as they provide vital ecosystem services to Brazil, the South American region, and the world. The Brazil Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) examines the implications of climate change and climate action for Brazil's development objectives and priorities. It identifies opportunities for Brazil to achieve both its development goals and its climate commitments. It lays out a combination of sectoral and economy-wide policy reforms, as well as targeted investments in near- and medium-term mitigation and adaptation measures to achieve more rapid and inclusive development with lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The idea is to maximize synergies between climate and development objectives, while addressing trade-offs among policy objectives and key transition challenges.

 

*** ARCHIVES ***

The World Factbook - Brazil

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency CIA

www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html

[accessed 10 November 2020]

World Factbook website has moved to ---> www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/brazil/

[accessed 5 January 2021]

Brazil is the eighth-largest economy in the world, but is recovering from a recession in 2015 and 2016 that ranks as the worst in the country’s history. In 2017, Brazil`s GDP grew 1%, inflation fell to historic lows of 2.9%, and the Central Bank lowered benchmark interest rates from 13.75% in 2016 to 7%.

GDP - per capita (PPP): $15,600 (2017 est.)

Labor force - by occupation:

agriculture: 9.4%

industry: 32.1%

services: 58.5% (2017 est.)

Unemployment rate: 12.8% (2017 est.)

Population below poverty line: 4.2% (2016 est.)

Maternal mortality rate: 60 deaths/100,000 live births (2017 est.)

Infant mortality rate: total: 15.9 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth: total population: 74.7 years

Drinking water source: improved: total: 98.2% of population

Physicians density: 2.17 physicians/1,000 population (2017)

Sanitation facility access: improved: total: 88.3% of population

Electricity access: electrification - total population: 100% (2016)

The Borgen Project - Brazil

borgenproject.org/category/brazil/

[accessed 21 January 2021]

The Borgen Project works with U.S. leaders to utilize the United States’ platform behind efforts toward improving living conditions for the world’s poor.  It is an innovative, national campaign that is working to make poverty a focus of U.S. foreign policy.  It believes that leaders of the most powerful nation on earth should be doing more to address global poverty. From ending segregation to providing women with the right to vote, nearly every wrong ever righted in history was achieved through advocacy. The Borgen Project addresses the big picture, operating at the political level advancing policies and programs that improve living conditions for those living on less than $1 per day.

~ Healthcare In Brazil: Government And Technology

borgenproject.org/healthcare-in-brazil/

~ The Fight Against Child Poverty In Brazil

borgenproject.org/child-poverty-in-brazil/

~ Examining The History Of Poverty In The Amazon Rainforest

borgenproject.org/poverty-in-the-amazon-rainforest/

~ Innovations In Poverty Eradication In Brazil

borgenproject.org/innovations-in-poverty-eradication-in-brazil/

~ The Strong Correlation Between Disability And Poverty

borgenproject.org/correlation-between-disability-and-poverty/

 

‘Tragic combination’: Millions go hungry amid Brazil COVID crisis

Sam Cowie, Aljazeera News, Sao Paulo, 11 Apr 2021

www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/11/tragic-combination-millions-go-hungry-brazil-covid-crisis

[accessed 12 April 2021]

19 million Brazilians have gone hungry during the pandemic, new study finds, as food insecurity is also on the rise.

Experts point to high unemployment exacerbated by the coronavirus, cuts and reductions to social programmes and sharp price increases on basic food staples as some of the reasons behind the problem.

Ana collects and sells recyclable goods three times a week, but she is lucky if she makes $3.50 (BR$20) a day. Meanwhile, the 5kg bag of rice she currently has to feed herself and her husband – and that was a donation from a local Catholic church – costs $4.40 (BR$25) at the local supermarket.

Basic food prices have rocketed during the pandemic, which has had a disproportionate effect on poorer citizens. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, in one year, the price of a kilogramme of rice shot up by nearly 70 percent, while black beans, potatoes, red meat, milk and soybean oil rose by 51, 47, 30, 20 and 87 percent, respectively.

In food-rich Brazil, people go hungry as pandemic rages

Today, Sao Paulo, 2 April 2021

www.todayonline.com/world/food-rich-brazil-people-go-hungry-pandemic-rages

[accessed 6 April 2021]

The lines of homeless and other needy people waiting for free meals in the streets of Brazil are growing longer as the Covid-19 pandemic rages out of control.

The global health crisis has left more than 315,000 people dead in the country and millions unemployed, and has pushed many people into poverty and hunger, who did not know such pain before.

 Brazil plunges into Covid chaos while church fights the ‘hunger pandemic’

Filipe Domingues, America Magazine, 25 March 2021

www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/03/25/brazil-covid-catholic-church-hunger-pandemic-240316

[accessed 26 March 2021]

“I’d rather stand in the soup kitchen line than stop paying the rent and become a street person,” said one woman, explaining why she began to visit the tent-kitchens sponsored by the Franciscan Solidarity Service, known by its Portuguese acronym Sefras, in São Paulo, Brazil. Her testimony, shared by Sefras president José Francisco, O.F.M, is just one of the thousands of stories of Brazilians who are falling into poverty—or returning to it—as Covid-19 rages across the country.

“At first, only the most vulnerable were starving, but the hunger queue is growing each day. It’s a hunger pandemic,” Father Francisco said. Sefras works both in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro among the homeless. It is currently providing 2,800 meals a day, four times more than before the pandemic.

NGOs Address Hunger in Brazil During COVID-19

Borgen Magazine, 23 February 2021

www.borgenmagazine.com/address-hunger-in-brazil/

[accessed 23 February 2021]

Because of the pandemic, the unemployment rate in Brazil reached 13.3% in June 2020 (14.9% for women). This is the highest rate it’s been in the past three years. Ação da Cidadania predicts that, by the end of 2020, there will be more than 100 million people in food insecurity. The Brazilian Government did offer a living stipend for those struggling the most, but it was temporary and not enough to meet the need.

Nonprofit organizations are combating poverty and aim to address hunger in Brazil through immediate humanitarian efforts as well as policy advocacy. “UNESCO’s normal poverty reduction efforts were not sufficient once the pandemic began,” said Marlova Noleto, Director of UNESCO in Brazil, in an interview with The Borgen Project. Now, the organization is distributing credit cards, specifically for groceries, to mothers in Brazil. Recipients are able to buy whatever foods best fit their needs during the pandemic.

Through this program, UNESCO has fed more than 1.3 million families and five million people in Brazil since late February 2020. “While the government is doing a very poor job in handling the pandemic in Brazil, local civil society and community groups have been organized, supporting the most vulnerable communities and leading the way to this crisis,” Bertolucci said..

The World Bank in Brazil

www.worldbank.org/en/country/brazil/overview

[accessed 16 April 2021]

Brazil is projected to fall into its deepest recession on record. However, macroeconomic framework is expected to remain broadly adequate, albeit with substantial downside risks, calling for strong fiscal consolidation and adoption of structural reforms.

Looking back a few years …

Advameg, Inc., Encyclopedia of the Nations

www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Brazil-ECONOMY.html

[accessed 17 December 2020]

Inflation continued to rage in the early 1990s. In 1994 it peaked at 2,700%. That year, the finance minister, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (later president), introduced a new currency, the real, and a new economic plan called the Real Plan. The plan featured privatization of state-owned industries, lowering of tariffs, and the abolition of Brazil's unique and counterproductive wage-inflation indexing, which had sent prices on a seemingly endless upward spiral. By ending the hyperinflation of the past decades, the government greatly increased the standard of living of millions of Brazilians, allowed businesses to plan for the medium term in an environment of stability, and created a class of economically stable consumers. Inflation had dropped to only6.9% by 1997, and has since remained in single digits.

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