MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Half a million Brazilians slide back to poverty

Over half a million Brazilians have fallen back to poverty from their lower middle class status according to the latest paper from the Social Politics Department belonging to the Getulio Vargas Foundation research centre in Rio do Janeiro, FGV.

The paper covers the six main areas in metropolitan Brazil, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio do Janeiro, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Recife and Belo Horizonte, the same which are taken to elaborate the urban employment data.

According to FGV, 563.000 people from category C or medium popular, dropped during the first months of this year to categories D and E, the lowest in terms of income in Brazil.

If categories A and B are included the number of Brazilians that slipped from social category during January adds up to 765.000. Taken overall C in the six urban areas fell from 53.8% in December to 52-6% in January.

The slide comes after an advance of 10.8 percentage points jump in category C, since President Lula da Silva took office in 2003 to December 2008, six years of Workers Party administration.

However a private paper from the public opinion polling consultants IBOPE indicates that in spite of the slide, 76% of category C, an estimated 23.2 million people with average income in the region of 450 to 2.200 US dollars have no intention of reducing their consumption capacity in spite of the world recession.