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How poor are the poor in the State of São Paulo?

Demographer analyzes changes in the sociodemographic, spatial and migratory dynamics of the poor population from 1991 to 2015

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Not all poor people are the same – the statement, which seems like common sense, was demonstrated in a doctoral thesis analyzing changes in the sociodemographic, spatial and migratory dynamics of the poor population in the State of São Paulo between 1991 and 2015. The research by demographer Pier Francesco De Maria points out that poverty levels fell substantially in the period analyzed – which coincides with what is observed in the national literature – but that this did not result in a reduction in inequality among the poor, especially among those in situations of extreme poverty. Furthermore: that income transfer programs such as Bolsa Família and the Continuous Payment Benefit (aimed at the elderly and people with disabilities), however successful and important they have been and continue to be, have not necessarily identified or reached the poorest among the poor.

“Income is an important one-dimensional index for assessing poverty, but it is insufficient. Therefore, we have advanced in the analysis of what we call multidimensional poverty, involving other aspects such as quality of housing, access to services, level of education to compete in the job market, the fact of working and so on”, explains Pier De Maria, who was guided by professor Rosana Baeninger, from the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH). “In the thesis, we sought to study how the poor are different from each other – and also from the non-poor –, using a division into four groups: the non-poor, those vulnerable to poverty, the poor and the extremely poor.”

The author of the thesis states that the combination of methodologies and indicators, from the Demographic Census (1991, 2000 and 2010) and the PNAD (annual National Household Sample Survey, 1992 to 2015), made it possible to observe the trajectory of poverty in the State and its socio-spatial evolution. “As a unidimensional index, we follow the usual criteria in Brazil, which assigns up to half a minimum wage for the poor and a quarter of the wage for the extremely poor; Those vulnerable to poverty are those who earn half to two salaries (around 1.800 reais, a value obtained considering that the basic food basket is only a portion of the necessary income) and, above that, are the non-poor. As multidimensional indices, we adopted two different methodologies, one national and the other international, whose results, on a scale ranging from zero to 1 (the closer to 1, the worse the individual's condition), were stratified as suggested in the literature.”

Photo: Perri
Demographer Pier Francesco De Maria, author of the research: “Income is an important one-dimensional index for assessing poverty, but insufficient”

According to De Maria, the analysis of uni- and multi-monthly indices confirmed an expected reduction in the number of poor people in the State of São Paulo, not only in absolute but also relative terms. "This is a fact. It turns out that this reduction was not accompanied by a reduction in inequalities among the poor, especially among those in extreme poverty. The composition of the poor population is increasingly heterogeneous, we cannot say that the poor are all the same: those who were poor move up to the non-poor group and the extremely poor to the poor – it is a change of level, which we call of upward mobility. But there is a group among the poorest who are unable to make that leap and are left behind – that is, within this group, there are those who are on the threshold of poverty and a larger contingent parked further away, on the edge.”

For the author of the thesis, income inequality among the extremely poor has increased over time, reflecting a combination of the heterogenization of poverty with inequality in access to income transfer policies. “These people have not had access to social policies or have not been identified by the State; We also know of individuals without birth registration and, consequently, without an identity card to obtain benefits. Another possibility is that the government did not reach them due to problems in managing these policies. Programs like Brasil sem Miséria [launched in June 2011, during the Dilma Rousseff government] came, in a way, to identify and serve this group that was forgotten.”

 

Spatial inequality

Pier De Maria notes that inequality was also observed at a spatial level, through the analysis of the 645 municipalities in the State, which is made up of regions with different profiles, dynamics and inequalities. “We found that, in addition to the increase in inequality between the poor and extremely poor, and even with the reduction in the level of poverty, the way in which this inequality is distributed across the territory is different. The reduction in poverty began in the late 1980s in São Paulo and Campinas, spreading to the metropolitan regions of these large centers, then advancing to the main cities in the interior, such as Piracicaba, Ribeirão Preto and São José do Rio Preto, and then to the interior of these regions.”

As a result, according to the author of the thesis, some edges of the State were left behind. “This unequal distribution of poverty can be explained, in part, by the greater effectiveness of the secretariats of large cities in managing social policies, but also by the hypothesis we followed in the thesis: that local economic dynamics allowed poverty to be reduced earlier ( and that inequality among the poor also increased earlier). What we place as the edges of the State – Vale do Paraíba up to the limit with Rio de Janeiro and on the borders with Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul – still have higher levels of poverty than the rest of the territory, due to the delay in arrival of benefits and economic and social improvements.”

 

Migration dynamics

Analyzing the migratory dynamics of the population by socioeconomic group, the demographer was able to verify that the destinies of the poor are very different from those sought by the wealthier; that the poor are those who migrate the most and come from more distant origins; and that intrastate migration is more intense among the extremely poor. “A phrase that bothers me a lot is: 'you don't migrate because you're poor'. In the separation by groups, we see that the poor migrate a lot in the State of São Paulo and, when they are from outside, they come from places as distant as the non-poor ones – from the coast and interior of the Northeast, the North (Belém, Manaus, Porto Velho ). The migration flow of the extremely poor is much smaller, which may be linked to the lack of opportunities and access to income.”

The researcher adds that, focusing on mobility only within the State of São Paulo, the extremely poor come from further away, traveling an average of 150km, compared to 130km for the non-poor. “As small as the difference may seem, what changes is the destination: if the non-poor still look to ABC for a good job opportunity, the poorest avoid this region because they would be closer to informality and have a higher cost of living, compared to the region of Campinas, for example, which is still a growth hub – followed by Limeira, Piracicaba, Ribeirão Preto and São José do Rio Preto, which are expanding regions. The destination is hand-picked, which reinforces the notion that migration attracts migration: having someone you know in a certain location makes inclusion easier.”

 

The weight of Campinas

Another result obtained by Pier De Maria is that the level of inequality in the State did not fall as much as it could have, for two reasons, independent and combined: first, that inequality among the extremely poor tripled from 1992 to 2015; second, that the levels of poverty and the dynamics of inequality in what IBGE defines as the intermediate region (RI) of Campinas, differ from the rest of the territory of São Paulo. “If we removed this IR, inequality in the State would be around ten percent lower, with an index of 0.54 compared to the registered rate of 0.6. This means that in this region we may have a greater number of people with higher incomes or very close to a multidimensional poverty index equal to zero; or, even, a concentration of not so large, but rich, people, amidst a larger contingent of low-income people and high levels of poverty.”

Finally, by dividing São Paulo's municipalities using the Gini index (which measures inequality) and multidimensional poverty indices, the researcher arrived at a regionalization with five groups: areas of lower poverty and inequality, areas of poverty transition, areas of transition of inequality, areas of greater poverty and inequality, and areas of contradiction. These areas, in addition to having differences in poverty and inequality rates, have distinctions in terms of industrial participation, social vulnerability, municipal sizes and demographic indicators. “We noticed that the heterogeneity between municipalities in the same area was lower in the 1991 Census, became more heterogeneous in 2000 and signaled homogeneity in 2010, which we will only be able to confirm in the 2020 Census.”

Pier De Maria justifies that the homogenization dynamics expected in 2010 collided with data from the PNAD from 2015 and other IBGE surveys from 2016 onwards, showing an increase in poverty levels and a change in inequality levels in Brazil, as well as in the state of Sao Paulo. “It is likely that the dynamics imagined for 2020 will reverse, due to what happened in recent years. Just to cite one example, an interesting discussion raised by the panel during the defense of the thesis is that problems that we thought were overcome in Brazil, such as hunger and infant mortality, are returning. These questions were no longer of much concern to Brazilian social researchers, who may have to revisit them.”

 

 

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