Brazil’s economic war against coronavirus presents many pitfalls

While Jair Bolsonaro’s economic team has yet to lay out its plans for a direct wealth-transfer policy to replace the coronavirus emergency salary, labor market data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) gives an idea of the challenges the government will face in post-pandemic Brazil. Being paid to the unemployed, informal workers, individual micro-business owners, and beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família program, the emergency salary reached 44 percent of Brazilian households in July, according to the National Household Sample Survey Covid-19 (PNAD Covid-19). In May, 38 percent of homes had access to the program.

The survey is the third in a special series which began in May, using experimental statistics to measure the impact of...