Poverty has a record high and reaches 62.5 million Brazilians in 2021, says IBGE

The contingent of Brazilians below the poverty line reached the level of 29.4% of the population — or 62.5 million people — in 2021, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in a survey released this Friday ( two). Of these, around 17.9 million (or 8.4% of the population) were in extreme poverty.

The calculated numbers represent a record since the beginning of the historical series, in 2012.

Between 2020 and 2021, according to the IBGE, the increase in both groups was 22.7% and 48.2%, respectively. In closed numbers, the contingent of people below the poverty line now includes over 11.6 million Brazilians; extreme poverty, 5.8 million.

The criteria for defining the so-called “lines” of poverty and extreme poverty are defined by the World Bank. In the first group, monthly per capita income of US$ 5.50 is considered, within the logic of purchasing power parity — that is, how much each currency can buy in international terms. In Brazil, it is equivalent to R$ 486.

The extreme poverty line is already US$ 1.90, or R$ 168 per month per capita.

In the numbers consolidated by the IBGE, the proportion of children under 14 years of age below the poverty line reached the highest level in the historical series, at 46.2%. That of blacks and browns, at 37.7%, is almost double the proportion of whites, at 18.6%.

When analyzing the country’s regions, the Northeast and North led the highest proportions of poor people in the regional population, with 48.7% and 44.9%, respectively. In the Southeast and Midwest, one in five inhabitants were below the poverty line. In the South, the percentage was 14.2%.

The IBGE survey also found that the Gini Index — an instrument that measures the degree of income concentration — increased and returned to the 2019 level, the second highest in the series, going to 0.544. The peak was in 2018, when it reached 0.545.

The closer to zero, the greater the income equality.