Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Has Brazil made signi icant social progress during the longest left-wing democratic government in its history, the Workers' Party (PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores) rule from 2002 to 2016?This is an immensely complex question whose answer depends in great part, of course, on the criteria of social progress adopted, which is in turn a contested issue.But there seems to be a strong consensus that, at least in one dimension, i.e. the reduction of poverty, Brazil made substantial progress in the PT years, as tens of millions of people were raised above the poverty line during that period.But the consensus stops there.When we move from extreme poverty to broader issues such as inequality and the population's well-being, agreement is much thinner.The celebrated decrease in economic inequality lauded both domestically and abroad, for instance, has been put into question by recent research based on tax data unavailable to earlier studies (MEDEIROS et al., 2015).The improvements in health, education, and race and gender equality are also a matter of ongoing debate 1 .Lena Lavinas' (2017) recent book, "The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization: the Brazilian Paradox", is an important contribution to this debate.She is iercely critical of the impact of the PT's rule in that period.The self-proclaimed center-left government failed, in her view, to make progress beyond the important, but nonetheless limited achievements of the conditional cash transfer programme (Bolsa Famıĺia).It missed the opportunity to "transform social relations and blunt the privileges of the ( * )
Author: Octavio Luiz Motta Ferraz
Institution: King's College London
Language: English
Topic: Social and Political Issues
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $456
OpenAlex ID: W2902000652