Social Structure and Distributive Policies under the PT Governments: A Poverty-Reducing Variety of Neoliberalism

Abstract

Brazil’s social structure and associated distributive policies during the PT governments did not depart from neoliberalism but rather implemented a poverty-reducing variant of it. Through minimum-wage hikes, conditional cash transfers, legislation driving financial innovation, and the subsidizing of privately provided for-profit services, state power was used to include individuals in ever-expanding formal circuits of commodity production and consumption. Deprivation in multiple dimensions was indeed reduced through these policies, but in the process social mobility came to mean exiting poverty, getting a formal low-skilled job, and accessing credit at lower interest rates to pay for state-subsidized private health and education. A estrutura social do Brasil e as políticas distributivas associadas a ela durante os governos do PT não se afastaram do neoliberalismo, mas sim implementaram uma variante de neoliberalismo redutora da pobreza. Por meio de aumentos do salário mínimo, transferências condicionais de renda, legislação que impulsionava a inovação financeira e o subsídio para serviços privados prestados com fins lucrativos, o poder do Estado foi usado para incluir indivíduos em crescentes circuitos formais de produção e consumo de mercadorias. A privação em múltiplas dimensões foi realmente reduzida por meio dessas políticas, mas neste processo a mobilidade social passou a significar sair da pobreza, conseguir um emprego formal pouco qualificado e obter crédito a taxas de juros mais baixas para pagar pela saúde e educação privadas subsidiadas pelo Estado.

The Struggle For Health: Medical Brokerage and the Power of Care in Brazil’s Amazon Estuary

“…For many, the election in 2002 of the former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva marked a new chapter in the early twentieth-century sanitarians' vision of public power through medicine. Under Lula's left-leaning Workers' Party, the federal government increased funding for the federal health ministry throughout its thirteen-year tenure from 2003 to 2016 (Loureiro 2020). Supported by AMIA and other community leaders, Abaetetuba elected its first Workers' Party mayor to the municipality in 2005.…”

“…Many segments of the private health sector welcomed increased federal health spending, and the largest beneficiaries of Brazil's ostensibly “post‐neoliberal compromise” were undeniably capital and the ascendant middle class (Saad‐Filho 2020). Even under the Workers' Party government, health policy consisted of a “two‐pronged approach in which an underfunded public system coexisted with a subsidized private one” (Loureiro 2020). Between 2003 and 2013, tax exemptions, subsidies for employer‐provided health plans, and incentives for private hospitals and medical suppliers increased by 70 percent, amounting to a third of the federal Ministry of Health's budget.…”

“…Between 2003 and 2013, tax exemptions, subsidies for employer-provided health plans, and incentives for private hospitals and medical suppliers increased by 70 percent, amounting to a third of the federal Ministry of Health's budget. Buttressed by fiscal incentives, the profits of private health insurers tripled between 2003 and 2011 (Loureiro 2020).…”

From social choice to inequality-decomposition: in the spirit of Arrow and Atkinson by way of Sen and Shorrocks

“…The other two main processes that contributed to falling labour-market inequality were a result of Brazil's overall pattern of growth during this period: the formalisation of, and real wage gains for, low-skilled occupations (Loureiro 2020b, Rugitsky 2019. With the initial increase of incomes in the bottom of the distribution, through greater government transfers and rising minimum wages, the demand for wage-goods and -services (i.e.…”

The Problem Of Poverty In The Context Of Changes Institutional Environment

“…According to the schedule of measures of strategic planning of the Ministry of labor, the number of poor people should decrease to 10% of Russians in 2020 and will continue to consistently decrease to 6.6% in 2024. The reduction of the poor will be due to the indexation of payments, an annual increase in insurance pensions, higher than inflation, an increase in the minimum wage in line with the increase in the cost of living, and the conclusion of social contracts (Loureiro, 2019). The meaning of a social contract is that a citizen or family receives money on the condition that they get a job, retrain for another profession, or open their own business.…”