Social issues in Brazil

Brazil ranks 49.3 in the Gini coefficient index, with the richest 10% of Brazilians earning 43% of the nation's income, the poorest 34% earn less than 1.2%.

According to PNUD, in 1991, 99.2% of the municipalities had a low/very low HDI; but this number has fallen to 25.2% in 2010. On the other hand, the number of municipalities with high/very high HDI jumped from 0.2% in 1991 to 34.7% in 2010. In 2012, the Brazilian HDI was 0.730, ranking 83rd worldwide and considered high.

Poverty in Brazil is most visually represented by the favelas, slums in the country's metropolitan areas and remote upcountry regions that suffer with economic underdevelopment and below-par standards of living. In Rio de Janeiro, about a fifth of its population of six million live in several hundred favelas, situated on steep, neglected land largely beyond the control and services of city authorities. An attempt to mitigate these problems is the "Fome Zero" program launched by then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2003. Part of this is "Bolsa Família", a cash transfer program that gives money to impoverished families under the condition that they keep their kids vaccinated and in school.

The Lula administration (2003–2011) reduced 9.8% the rate of poverty based on labor income during June 2002 and June 2006 according to Fundação Getúlio Vargas. In June 2006, the rate of extreme poverty was 18.57% of the population.

The rate of poverty is in part attributed to the country's economic inequality. Brazil ranks among the world's highest nations in the Gini coefficient index of inequality assessment. A study on the subject shows that the poor segment constitutes roughly one third of the population, and the extremely poor make out 13% (2005 figures). However, the same study shows the income growth of the poorest 20% population segment to be almost in par with China, while the richest 10% are stagnating.

Along with the problem of poverty, Brazil is among the ten most unequal countries in the world, according to the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea) of Brazil. Brazil has 0.539 by the Gini index, based on 2018 data. It is among the ten most unequal countries in the world, being the only Latin American in the list where Africans appear.^{[clarification needed]} Brazil is more unequal than Botswana, with 0.533 according to the Gini index, a small country neighboring South Africa with just over two million inhabitants.

When the range is expanded from 1% to the richest 10% of Brazilians, the participation in the country's income rises to 41.9% of the total. In other words, the other 90% of the population earn less than 60% of the total income, just to show such a disparity.

The Brazilian federal government has also implemented and expanded in the last years major subsidy programs, such as Bolsa Família and Fome Zero, for families deemed to be in need of assistance.