Zero hunger: the politics of anti-hunger policy in Brazil

Bither-Terry, Russell

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March 20, 2019

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Bither-Terry, Russell
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science

Abstract

In 2003 Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) announced a nationwide Zero Hunger Program (Programa Fome Zero) and created the Special Ministry for Food Security (MESA), headed by José Graziano, to integrate a wide range initiatives to eliminate the “vicious cycle” of hunger. Within a year President Lula had merged MESA's Food Card program with three other cash transfers to form a conditional cash transfer (CCT) called Bolsa Família (Family Allowance). He also merged MESA into the new Ministry of Social Development headed by Patrus Ananias. This dissertation asks (1) why anti-hunger policies ultimately took the form they did and (2) how well they have worked to reduce poverty and hunger. Regarding the first question, it argues that program implementation initially failed in 2003 because the design was too complex and did not engage constructively with policy legacies from the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government. In contrast to the Food Card, Bolsa Família represented a simpler program that built on those legacies. The dissertation supports this assessment with evidence from government documents, media reports, and interviews fieldwork in Brazil (October 2010-July 2011). Regarding poverty, previous studies find that Bolsa Família is directly responsible for a reduction in headcount poverty (H) of only 1-2 percentage points. This dissertation uses the income gap (I), intensity (HI), and ordinal poverty (O) measures to analyze Brazil's National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) and demonstrates that the program led to a much more substantial reduction in the severity of poverty than in headcount poverty. Regarding hunger, malnutrition had already declined sharply before President Lula took office, but food insecurity declined by about a third from 2004-2009. The dissertation provides evidence that Bolsa Família contributed to this decline, showing that the increase in food security strongly correlates with the expansion of Bolsa Família at the state level.

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