Food Security in Brazil: An Analysis of the Effects of the Bolsa Família Programme

Sabrina de Cássia Mariano de Souza, Niemeyer Almeida Filho and Henrique Dantas Neder
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Sabrina de Cássia Mariano de Souza: Professor, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Triângulo Mineiro
Niemeyer Almeida Filho: Professor, Economics, Institute of the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
Henrique Dantas Neder: Professor, Economics, Institute of the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia

Journal, 2015, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-32

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of the Bolsa Família Programme, an important anti-poverty policy in Brazil, on the food purchasing power of low-income families. Microdata from the household-level Family Budget Survey of 2008–9 are used to examine expenditure on different food items for households below the poverty and extreme poverty cut-offs of the Bolsa Família Programme. We examined inflation in food items that constituted the bulk of food expenditure of poor households for the period 2000 to 2012, and found that domestic inflation followed international price increases. The data presented in this paper suggest that while the programmes of the Lula government represented significant political action towards combating hunger, and led to major reductions in the number of poor and undernourished persons in Brazil, the policies were insufficient to solve the problem of food deprivation. Our estimates showed that even if all poor and extremely poor families received the simulated benefits of the Bolsa Família Programme, this would still not ensure access to the minimum food basket. Anti-poverty programmes do not address issues of structural inflation, and in a period of higher prices of foods, such as observed globally in recent years, access to food can become critical.

Keywords: food inflation; food crisis; right to food; Bolsa Família Programme; Sao Paulo; Brazil; cash transfer; purchasing power; consumer basket; extreme poverty; poverty. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fas:journl:v:5:y:2015:i:2:p:1-32

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