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