Brazil's poverty rate falls to lowest level since 2012

The number of Brazilians living below the poverty line has dropped to its lowest point since 2012, according to official data Wednesday, though a quarter of the population was still under the threshold.

A total of 8.7 million inhabitants escaped the poverty category in 2023, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) said.

That pushed the proportion of Brazilians under the poverty line -- set at $6.85 per person per day by the World Bank -- from 31.6 percent in 2022 to 27.4 percent last year.

In nominal figures, the number of Brazilians considered poor went from 67.7 million to 59 million for those periods.

Brazil is the biggest country in Latin America, with a total population of 212 million.

According to the IBGE, the number of inhabitants living in extreme poverty -- on less than $2.15 per day -- also declined, from 12.6 million to 9.5 million.

Proportionally, that was a drop from 5 percent of the population in 2022 to 4.4 percent in 2023 -- also the lowest level since IBGE started recording that category in 2012.

"Creating a middle-class society, where everyone lives with more dignity, that is what brings me joy," Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on the X social media platform.

"That's why we were elected, and what we are working toward," he said.

An IBGE researcher, Leonardo Athias, said that the drop in the number living in poverty was because of "the dynamism of the labor market, but also the expansion of welfare programs."

Lula -- himself born impoverished -- has made fighting poverty a cornerstone of his presidential mandates.

He began his current stint in January 2023, following non-contiguously from two terms he served between 2003 and 2010.

On taking office he brought back his emblematic Bolsa Familia welfare program that gives payments to Brazil's poorest families.

But welfare spending is weighing on the country's finances, throwing into doubt the government's ability to balance the budget and forcing Lula's administration last week to unveil spending cuts.

Lula is seeking to take his poverty-fighting stance worldwide.

In November, at a G20 summit in Rio he hosted, he launched a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, which aims to rally the international community to the goal.