Transition recommends new design of Bolsa Família, with value per person

The technical transition group of Social Development recommended the restructuring of the Auxílio Brasil to resume the criterion that considers the number of family members in the calculation of the value of the benefit.

The objective is to correct the distortion caused by the minimum payment of BRL 600 per family, which ends up encouraging the artificial division of registrations and, consequently, the undue inclusion of beneficiaries. The considerations are contained in the final report of the group, obtained by Sheet.

“The iniquity of the design of the Auxílio Brasil floor was clear. It is a program that ends up paying R$ 600.00 both to the person who lives alone and to a single mother with three children”, says an excerpt from the document.

Technicians cited data to illustrate the size of the disparities. “In November 2022, while 5.5 million people who claimed to live alone received BRL 600.00 a month just for themselves, 19.8 million people received the equivalent of BRL 150.00 or less.”

Experts also advise the future government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to promote the merger of the program with Auxílio Gás, a program that subsidizes the purchase of cylinders and ends up having a similar target audience. The two benefits would be unified in the new Bolsa Família.

The recommendations will now be evaluated by the future Minister of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Fight against Hunger, Wellington Dias (PT).

He points out that Bolsa Família “was like this and was born like this”, with payment of amounts per person, according to the number of members, and rules aimed at protecting children. “The problem now is to adjust the model already in progress”, he said.

The report places the redesign of the program as a priority for the first 100 days of government. According to Dias, the intention is for the discussion to take place in the first three months of the administration.

During the campaign, Lula said he would maintain the minimum amount of R$600 per family and launched a promise to pay an additional R$150 per child up to six years old.

The transition team, however, has already been showing signs that it considers it necessary to redesign the program. Now, the recommendation was formalized in the final report of the technical group and is supported by assessments made by the TCU (Federal Audit Court).

Until 2021, the design of Bolsa Família provided for the payment of several installments per family, taking into account the existence of children, young people, pregnant or lactating women in the composition.

The Auxílio Brasil law, which replaced the program that was the hallmark of PT administrations, also provided for these installments, but the design ended up being supplanted by President Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) order to pay a minimum amount per family. The floor, initially at R$400.00, was increased to R$600.00 on the eve of the election.

“The substantive budget expansion of income transfer took place under a design that compromises the program’s ability to reduce poverty”, says the report. In the evaluation of the technicians, the adopted model is “unjustifiable” and disorganized the entire income transfer system.

“The granting of a benefit unrelated to the family composition led many people to register separately, outside the families they are part of. The proportion of people benefiting from the Auxílio Brasil who declare to live alone increased from 15.4% in December 2021 to 25 .8% in October 2022 – a proportion much higher than that verified in the PNAD 2021 (IBGE) for the low-income population, which was 7.7%”.

In an interview with journalists at the beginning of the month, former Minister of Social Development Tereza Campello, one of the coordinators of the technical group, pointed out that the number of single-person families rose from 1.8 million in December 2018 to 5.5 million in October 2022 —a growth of 197%, while the number of other families in the Single Registry rose 21% in the same period.

“The population was induced to register in this way. It is not a mistake of the poor person, it is a mistake of the State, a mistake of the Bolsonaro government”, said Campello.

According to transition interlocutors, if the technical group’s recommendation is accepted by the future minister, the new Bolsa Família should provide for a value per person, to be defined, in addition to an additional R$ 150 for children up to 6 years old.

In a hypothetical situation where the amount per person was BRL 100, for example, a family with two adults and two small children would receive BRL 700 — four installments of BRL 100, one for each member, and two of BRL 150 corresponding to children. These figures, however, are only illustrative of the operation and are not included in the technical report.

The final format will still depend on discussions by the new ministry and adaptation to authorized expenses for Bolsa Família in 2023, which add up to R$ 175 billion. Auxílio Gás has R$ 3.74 billion reserved.

There is also a need to observe the “political viability” of the changes, since the reunification of families may represent, in some cases, a reduction in the total amount received.

The Bolsonaro government itself admitted the undue inclusion of people when calling, for the beginning of next year, an investigation of the registers of single-person families. According to the Ministry of Citizenship, of the 3.2 million benefits to be reviewed, 2.5 million must be blocked.

The new government must reschedule these evaluations to avoid the formation of large queues at the service centers in the municipalities.

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT TECHNICAL GROUP

In the first 100 days:

• Launch of the New Bolsa Família, resumption of federative articulation and monitoring of conditionalities
• Launch of the Brasil Protege program, for population groups living on the streets, child labor, orphanhood and migration
• Launch of a productive inclusion program to combat desertification/adapt to climate change in the semi-arid region
• Elaboration of a protocol for the end of the BPC queue (Continued Provision Benefit)
• Issue of decree for the implementation of guidelines for the promotion of adequate and healthy food in schools
• Carrying out a public mobilization action to face hunger involving immediate and structuring activities
• Signing of the Amazon Fund contract for the project of cisterns in extractive forest reserves, involving the implementation of social technology for water treatment and sanitation for 5,000 families

Other recommendations:

• Redesign Auxílio Brasil, in order to consider the family composition, cease incentives to split families and expand the impact on poverty reduction
• Unify Auxílio Gás and Auxílio Brasil in the Novo Bolsa Família, based on benefit amounts calculated per person in the family and considering the impact on reducing poverty and inequality
• Evaluate possibilities for partnerships and review of Union funding for registration, in order to promote registration qualification quickly and avoid queues
• Integrate information from the CNIS (National Social Information Register) systemically into the Single Registry, carefully evaluating the migration of the system to Dataprev, considering the possibility of keeping the system at Caixa to avoid risks and discontinuities
• Redesign the pre-registration and suspend the possibility of updating via application confirmation, until the detailed assessment of its impact on the reliability of the registration data
• Develop a new version of the Cadastro Único, with a new form and new system, adhering to the new technological possibilities