A total of 22m people have been given additional cash benefits to bring them above the absolute poverty line, currently set at 70 reais ($35) per household member, per month. By adding a further 770m reais to annual federal welfare spending, currently around 30 billion reais, the government will be able to do the same for the remaining 2.5m very poor people it knows about, the president said. She asked mayors to help seek out the Brazilians still sunk in deep poverty who appear on no government list, and receive no federal aid—probably another 2.5m people.

Brazil, an upper-middle-income country, has been late in weaving a social safety-net. Over-65s whose household income per person is less than a quarter of the minimum wage (that is, under 169.50 reais) are entitled to a non-contributory pension equal to the minimum wage (currently 678 reais). But many poor families have no old person living with them. If they have children and live on less than 140 reais a month per person, they can apply for the Bolsa Família, a discretionary, and much less generous, monthly stipend paid in return for sending children to school and keeping up with basical medical requirements, such as getting them vaccinated. In November, recipients with under-15s in their households were guaranteed at least enough from the programme to bring their household per-person income above 70 reais a month. That guarantee has now been extended to all social-welfare recipients.

Well-off Brazilians are fond of complaining about assistencialismo (welfarism), which they fear undermines work incentives and weakens Brazil’s economy. Such criticisms miss the mark by a mile. It is certainly easier to get people into social programmes than back out of them—but that is true everywhere. And part of the programme’s budget goes on job training and microfinance, or in rural areas, training in more productive farming methods, which should help wean recipients off hand-outs. And the cash amounts are not large enough to encourage people to sit around doing nothing. There is strong evidence that recipients of the Bolsa Família keep their children longer in school—and that those children end up better educated and eventually in better jobs. By supporting consumption, it has brought businesses and jobs into some of the poorest corners of Brazil, setting in motion a virtuous cycle of economic growth. 

Others criticise Brasil Sem Miséria for being not too generous, but too stingy. In Brazil’s bigger cities, 70 reais per person does not go far. For someone who lives on São Paulo’s outskirts it is barely enough to cover the costs of travelling into the city centre each day in search of work. And many of those the government boasts of rescuing from destitution were brought from just below the poverty line to just above it. But a family of subsistence farmers living on their own land in the Amazon region will find a cash top-up of 70 reais per person a big help. Brasil Sem Miséria might not spell the end of extreme poverty in the country, but it certainly represents another step towards it.