Understanding Bolsonaro’s new cash-transfer program

Since his election in 2018, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and his Economy Minister Paulo Guedes have been working on a new social welfare program that would serve as an indelible legacy of the current government. Their concern is that the world-renowned Bolsa Família cash-transfer scheme is inescapably tied to the center-left Workers’ Party and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Bolsonaro administration could not be seen lauding the program for fears that it would improve the image of the president’s biggest political nemesis.

The solution came this month, with the announcement of Auxílio Brasil (Brazil Aid), which is in many ways an extension of the emergency coronavirus aid scheme carried out during the pandemic and will pay BRL 400 (USD 71) each month to poor families until the end of 2022.

However, while initially idealized as a legacy project, Auxílio Brasil is now being treated as a means of political survival for the embattled Mr. Bolsonaro. The 2022 election is fast approaching and the president’s approval ratings are desperately low for an incumbent seeking another four-year term. According to the most recent opinion poll from PoderData, the president has a rejection rate of 58 percent.

Reducing social mobility

Yet, there is much more to the Auxílio Brasil program than simply providing larger handouts to poor families — which today would receive just BRL 189 a month through Bolsa Família. The proposal also dismantles a series of social policies which, over the medium and long term, will reduce social mobility in one of the world’s most unequal countries.

This is the view of Denise...