Unemployment, poverty, and hunger in Brazil in Covid-19 pandemic times

ABSTRACT

This scientific note presents preliminary developments of the Covid-19 pandemic on unemployment, poverty, and hunger in Brazil. The data on unemployment rate, unemployment insurance claims, contingent of families in extreme poverty, and food insecurity was collected in government information systems, research published by public agencies, scientific articles, and in news portals. In an upward trajectory since 2015, the increase in unemployment and the number of families in extreme poverty was exacerbated after the pandemic began, drastically reducing the purchase power and access to healthy and adequate food, affecting mainly women and the populations of the Northern and Northeastern regions. Between January and September 2020, there was a 3% increase in unemployment in Brazil and, in October 2020, there were almost 485 thousand more families in extreme poverty compared to January of the same year. There are inadequate and insufficient responses from the Brazilian government to the articulated set of problems. The Covid-19 pandemic is a new element that potentiates the recent increase in hunger in Brazil, which occurs in parallel with the dismantling of the Food and Nutrition Security programs and the expansion of fiscal austerity measures, started with the political-economic crisis in 2015. There is an urgent need to recover the centrality of the agenda to fight hunger in Brazil, associated with the development of more robust contributions on the impact of the pandemic on the phenomena of poverty and hunger.