Forty Percent of Children Under 14 Live in Poverty in Brazil

By Jay Forte, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to a new study, government news agencies are reporting about seventeen million children under the age of fourteen – equivalent to 40.2 percent of the Brazilian population in this age group – live in low-income households.

The data is part of the report named Cenário da Infância e Adolescência no Brasil (Scenario of Childhood and Adolescence in Brazil), document that gives an overview of the situation of children in the country, released by the Abrinq Foundation. The study was done using data from public sources, including the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

In the North and Northeast, regions that present the worst situations, more than half of the children (60.6 percent and 54 percent, respectively) live with monthly household income per capita equal to or less than half a minimum wage.

Of this total, 5.8 million live in extreme poverty, characterized when per capita income is less than 25 percent of the minimum wage. Brazil’s federal government announced that as of January 1, 2017 the minimum wage will increase to R$937.00 per month (US$287.89), which corresponds to R$4.26 per hour or R$31.23 per day.

In this fourth edition, the publication gathers 23 social indicators, divided into themes such as child labor, basic sanitation, mortality and education. The publication also presents a series of proposals regarding children that are being processed in the National Congress.

Heloisa Oliveira, executive administrator of the Abrinq Foundation, said, “In this edition, in addition to portraying the situation of children in Brazil, we also present the Priority Agenda for Children and Adolescents in the National Congress. The content reveals the main legislative proposals in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.”

One of the topics addressed in the document is violence against children and adolescents. According to the study, 10,465 children and young people under the age of nineteen were murdered in Brazil in 2015, which corresponds to 18.4 percent of homicides committed in the country that year.

The study also showed more positive data, such as the country’s day-care coverage rate, which went from 28.4 percent in 2014 to 30.4 percent in 2015 – still far from the target set by the National Education Plan, To reach fifty percent by 2024. The complete data can be viewed on the website www.observatoriocrianca.org.br.