A study by the Zero Hunger Institute (IFZ, in Portuguese) released on Monday (11) shows that, in 2022 and 2023, 13 million people no longer suffered from hunger in Brazil.
According to the study, in the first quarter of 2022, 33 million people in the country were facing severe food insecurity. By the end of the same year, that number had dropped to 28 million. By 2023, the first year of the third presidential term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party), it had reduced to 20 million people.
Also according to IFZ, another 20 million people no longer suffered from moderate food insecurity in two years. They were 65 million at the beginning of 2022. At the end of 2023, there were 45 million.
Considering both serious and moderate food insecurity, there was a fall of 30% in the number of people affected in Brazil in the last two years.
The institute recalls it rose from 20.6% to 32.8% between 2018 and 2021. Since then, it has fallen and reached 28.9% in 2023.
The study was requested by Brazil’s Ministry of Development and Social Assistance and compared data from the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad, in Portuguese), carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, in Portuguese).
According to the study, reductions in unemployment and food prices contributed to the positive results. The increase in the minimum wage and Bolsa Família (Family Grant Program, in English) payments also has to do with the good numbers.
"Although there is still a long way to go, the success of the measures to increase the value of the minimum wage and the Bolsa Família program, as well as the fall in food inflation, show that we are on the right track to get Brazil off the Hunger Map again," says José Graziano, the director general of the IFZ.
For the Minister of Development and Social Assistance, Wellington Dias, Bolsa Família "is not an income transfer. It's a life policy." He adds "With the new Bolsa Família, we keep the income transfer model but take into account the size of the family and its composition: those families with children receive higher per capita value. Consequently, people are managing to regain access to quality food."
President Lula celebrated the results of the study on his social media accounts. "The Federal Government is working to get Brazil off the Hunger Map once again," he summarized in a post on X (formerly Twitter) about the study.
In 2023, Lula launched the Brazil Without Hunger program. He aims to get the country off the Hunger Map by 2030 and reduce to less than 5% the percentage of households coping with severe food insecurity.
*Article updated at 14:40. The initial text stated that there was a decrease in hunger in 2023. In fact, it occurred in 2022 and 2023.
