IBGE: Percentage of Families Without Food But With Computers Has Risen

12/19/2014 - 09h37

In spite of the decrease in famine levels in Brazil, as seen in the piece of research published on Thursday, December 18th, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the percentage of homes that have personal computers while they do not have food has risen.

According to the supplement released by the National Research of Household Sampling (PNAD), households in hunger have reached 3.2% of the 65.2 million sampled households. Out of this percentage, 10% had computers with internet access in 2013.

This percentage represents an increase of 6.7 percentage points in relation to 2009, when only 3.3% of households had access to the internet while they did not have food.

The rise in income that was seen across the country in the last decade has increased the purchasing power of consumer goods across all social classes.

The home computer - not necessarily with internet access - was present in 6% of households in a condition of food insecurity in 2009 and in 2013 this percentage shot up to 13.8%, an increase of 7.8 percentage points.

People without access to food are part of a pocket of the population in a situation of food insecurity. Those in this condition have seen a reduction, in the last three months, in the quantity of food that can be given to the household children or have a family member who might have spent a whole day without eating due to lack of money.

This research has shown that there has been a rise in the percentage of families in extreme food insecurity who also have a television, a washing machine, a fridge and a stove.

Translated by CRISTIANE COSTA LIMA

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