Brazil Aid: over 1 million families on waiting list in February, says study

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the Ministry of Citizenship, the queue of Brazilians waiting for the Brazil Aid (Auxílio Brasil) program has grown again. The National Confederation of Municipalities (CNM) study shows that 1,050,295 families who meet the requirements to receive the benefit did not have access to it in February this year.

The so-called repressed demand had a leap compared to January when the number of families waiting was 434,421.

To receive the benefit, families must meet the program’s conditions and be registered in the Unified Registry (CadÚnico). It is not necessary to apply for the aid: the government evaluates within the CadÚnico registry those who are eligible. The repressed demand, thus, takes into account the number of people enrolled in the registry who qualify to receive the benefit.

Compared to the second semester of 2021, however, there was a sharp drop in the waiting list, which coincides with the inclusion of about 3 million families into the program between December 2021 and January 2022, right after the government transformed Family Grant (Bolsa Família) into Brazil Aid.

In July 2021, there was a demand for access to the program (then Family Grant) of 2.41 million families. In November 2021, the number jumped to more than 3.18 million – a 32% increase in 4 months.

On the other hand, in January, the number of families waiting for the benefit had a considerable drop of 86.4%, to 434,200, with the inclusion of 3 million families in the program. And in February, there was a 142% jump in the number of families without access to the benefit, to more than 1 million.

BY REGIONS

The region with the highest incidence of waiting for the benefit to be granted in January was the Southeast, with 183,753, followed by the Northeast (124,519).

São Paulo was the state with the highest number of families entitled to receive but not in the program: 90,793, followed by Minas Gerais (43,689), Rio de Janeiro (40,007), Bahia (32,384), and Pernambuco (26,355).

The CNM does not yet have the detailed data for February by states and municipalities.

The study shows that in July 2021, there were more than 25 million families registered in the Unified Registry, and approximately 19.1 million met the requirements to receive the benefit. That is, 76% of the Brazilian families enrolled in the CadÚnico should be included in the cash transfer program. However, the number of beneficiaries was 16.7 million, according to CNM.

In November, 17.6 million families had the profile to be in the social program, but only 14.5 million were receiving the cash transfer. Compared to July, there is a drop of 2.18 million beneficiaries. And the repressed demand was almost 3.2 million families – an increase of 773,500 families compared to July.

In January, the number of benefited families went from 14.5 million to 17.5 million. According to the CNM, the ideal would be that the program would have more than 18 million families in that month to eliminate the waiting list. With this, the repressed demand reached nearly half a million families.

In February, 556,000 families were included in Auxílio Brasil, reaching 18.05 million. However, the ideal number would be 19.1 million; that is, the repressed demand reaches 1.05 million families. With this, the number of families that should be in the program is equal to that of July 2021.

THE STUDY

The study used data from Cecad, a tool that allows the consultation, selection, and extraction of information from the Unified Registry (CadÚnico) and allows knowing the socioeconomic characteristics of families and individuals included in the registry.

The CadÚnico is the primary tool for selecting and including low-income families in social programs such as the former Family Grant and the current Brazil Aid.

The study used data on the number of families and individuals enrolled in the Unified Registry who have the profile for the social benefit and the actual beneficiaries of the two programs. From this cross-checking, it was possible to calculate the repressed demand, i.e., families that should be receiving the benefit because they fit the profile of the programs but were not included.

With information from G1