Fight Against Poverty and Inequality Unites Russia and Brazil
During Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's visit to Russia, a round table discussion took place at HSE University on May 7, featuring Janja Lula da Silva, the First Lady of Brazil. The event, titled "The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty as a Key to Modern International Cooperation," sparked a lively exchange of ideas.
The discussion revealed a convergence between Brazil and Russia: both nations have made poverty and inequality reduction a cornerstone of their development strategies and have been implementing similar policy measures to achieve this goal. Key policies—such as raising the minimum wage, supporting small businesses, and launching social programmes for most vulnerable families—form the backbone of their efforts to combat poverty and inequality.
Especially noteworthy are targeted assistance programmes for most vulnerable families, which operate on the principle of mutual responsibility. Here, the government provides aid on the condition that families actively seek employment or engage in entrepreneurship. This dual approach—state support paired with personal income from work—has proven highly effective in reducing poverty and inequality.
In Brazil, such support mechanisms began in 2001 with the Zero Hunger programme, which aimed to bolster farming for low-income individuals. In 2002, the Bolsa Família programme—translated as "Family Wallet"—an extensive targeted initiative to reduce poverty, was launched. In addition to farming, this programme now encompasses various areas, including Food Cards, Gasification, School Wallets, Social Phones, Employment, and School Health. According to Brazilian experts, by 2012, approximately 65 million people were beneficiaries of this programme, which helped decrease poverty from 21.3% in 2002 to 6.3% in 2012.
In Russia, a similar initiative—the Social Contract—was introduced in 2013, targeting families that have per capita incomes below the subsistence level and untapped labour potential. The programme delivers support across four key areas: job placement, entrepreneurial activities, subsistence farming, and overcoming challenging life situations. Drawing from Bolsa Família's 12-year experience, Russian policymakers incorporated Brazilian insights, particularly in designing the subsistence farming and difficult life situation components. By 2022, roughly one million Russians had engaged with the Social Contract programme, with 23% escaping poverty after leveraging the programme's employment opportunities.
Experts also highlighted the differing methods used by Russia and Brazil to define the poverty line. Brazil employs the international poverty threshold set at $2.15 per day per person in purchasing power parity, while Russia relies on a national definition to track poverty levels. The current Russian Poverty Line was established in Q4 of 2020 based on the cost of a minimum basket and has been adjusted quarterly in line with inflation. For international comparisons, the HSE Institute for Social Policy translates this national poverty line into dollars per day in purchasing power parity, and as of 2023, it stood at $14 per day per person. Based on this metric, the poverty level in Russia was recorded at 7.2% in 2024, with no statistically significant poverty at the $2.15 threshold.
Looking ahead, as the Russian Social Contract programme is set to expand for large families by 2036, experts are keenly interested in adopting the School Wallet component from the Bolsa Família programme. This feature provides financial compensation for school lunches and public transport for children from low-income families. The mechanisms employed in this component could prove invaluable for supporting large families with costs related to continuing education, extended-day programmes, and summer school stays.
In their turn, Brazilian experts expressed keen interest in the Russian pension support approach, where retirees with incomes below the subsistence threshold receive targeted benefits to bridge this gap.
In a collaborative discussion, experts explored solutions that could prove helpful for the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. They highlighted the potential for countries in the Global South to benefit from Russia's advancements in promoting personal subsistence farming and using digital platforms as social marketplaces. Additionally, community-guaranteed loans for impoverished families aimed at bolstering production levels, a model that has been adopted by other countries, was recognised as particularly promising. These community guarantees minimise loan servicing costs and ensure nearly 100% repayment rates, especially among families with children. A study focused on developing mechanisms to curb the rising prices of essential food products can become a potential solution to the increasing share of non-production costs in food pricing over recent decades.
Russian and Brazilian scholars agreed that a comparative study of key metrics and technologies related to socio-economic development could form the cornerstone of future collaboration between the two nations. Such research would focus on strategies to expand the middle class which serves as a key driver of social stability and innovation-led economic growth.