Novo Bolsa Família should raise average benefit to R$ 715 and serve 20.8 million households – 03/02/2023 – Market

The new version of Bolsa Família should raise the average amount to be received by each family to around R$714, according to government technicians interviewed by the Sheet. Today, the average benefit is just over R$600.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) launches this Thursday (2) the new format of the income transfer program.

This marks the end of Auxílio Brasil, created by former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in November 2021. Since the election campaign, Lula has promised to resume the name Bolsa Família – PT’s main brand in the social area.

For this, he will sign the provisional measure that will be forwarded to the National Congress.

Calculations by the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance predict that, on average, the new Bolsa Família will serve around 20.8 million homes this year.

This represents a drop from the current number (about 21.9 million). Members of the folder explain that the reduction will be due to the withdrawal of families that received the benefit of the Brazil Aid irregularly.

The federal government had announced the day before the basic guidelines of the program, whose minimum benefit will be BRL 600 per family, an amount that had been a campaign promise by Lula — and also by his rival, former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). .

The new program will also have two additional benefits. One of them will be R$ 150 per child from 0 to 6 years old, which had also been promised by Lula during the election period. Furthermore, like the Sheet anticipated, R$ 50 will be paid for each member of the family between 7 and 18 years old.

These additional payments were the way the government found to calculate the benefit based on the size of each family. Today, Auxílio Brasil pays BRL 600 per family regardless of the number of members – this means that a single mother with two children can receive the same amount as a single man without children.

In addition, there are suspicions of unduly paid benefits in cases of single-person families, considering that people from the same nucleus may have applied to join the program separately.

In the reformulation of Bolsa Família, the government also announced that the new program will include families with income of up to R$218 per person —an increase in relation to the poverty range, which was up to R$210 per person.

The 3.81% readjustment is below the 7.12% inflation accumulated since December 2021, when the law that created Auxílio Brasil and instituted the cut-off line of R$ 210 per person was sanctioned.

The measure will allow more families to be eligible to receive the new Bolsa Família. Even so, the government hopes, at first, to reduce the number of families in the program in relation to the current level due to the exclusion of irregular registrations.

With the departure of families, there is room for new beneficiaries. The expectation is, therefore, to keep the queue zero until the end of the year.

For this year, the federal government will have a ceiling of R$ 175 billion to allocate to the new Bolsa Família. The amount is higher than the budget approved last year, but it became possible after the approval of a PEC (Proposed Amendment to the Constitution) articulated by Lula’s team, still in the transition period.