Under the impact of the recovery of the job market and the expansion of the Auxílio Brasil, the poverty rate in the country dropped from the record level of 36.7% in 2021 to 31.6% in 2022. This is indicated by data released on Wednesday (6) by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). In absolute terms, the number of people considered poor decreased from 78 million in 2021 to 67.8 million in 2022.
This means that 10.2 million people left poverty last year. The contingent is close to the total population of Rio Grande do Sul, which was 10.9 million in 2022, according to the Demographic Census. The rate of 31.6%, recorded last year, is the lowest since 2020 (31%), the initial year of the pandemic. At that time, emergency aid and other benefits had reduced poverty in the country. The lowest rate in the historical series, which began in 2012, occurred in 2014 (30.8%).
The data is part of the Social Indicators Synthesis. The publication analyzes statistics from sources such as the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnad Contínua), also produced by IBGE. In this edition of the synthesis, the institute updated the poverty and extreme poverty lines, following criteria recommended by the World Bank. With the revision in the historical series, the poverty line went from $5.50 to $6.85 in PPP (purchasing power parity). The extreme poverty line, in turn, jumped from $1.90 to $2.15, also in PPP. In practice, people living on amounts below these per day were considered poor or extremely poor.