Recession and financing of social policies

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the impact produced upon the financing of social policies by the economic recession Brazilian society has faced, in the beginning of the '80s.

Its first part stresses two aspects: firstly, the ancillary way in which the problem of social development was seen and dealt with in the realm of economic policies prevailing from 1964 to 1984, one of the manifestations of this approach being the inadequacy of mechanisms for the financing of social policies concerned with an endeavour towards equality. This is, undoubtedly, one of the most important determinants of the limited effectivity achieved by the majority of those programs - even during the most favorable economic conjunctures.

The second aspect emphasized refers to the limitations of said governmental strategy during the downward flow of the economic cycle, either with a view at supporting the level of disbursement, or intending to provide the lowest-income strata with a protective framework for their facing the oncoming crisis. The study, more specifically, wishes to demonstrate that in the first years of the decade occurred the depletion of patterns of State intervention in social policies, wich had achieved its consolidation in post-l964 years, particularly noticeable being the exhaustion of their financing mechanisms. This process, ultimately, was conditioned by the simultaneous and antagonistic impacts of a recessive economic policy – general worsening of living conditions, dilapidation of the existing sources of financing and cuttings in social expenditures - effects which superimposed themselves on the enhancing of channels for popular pressure towards a more efficacious social policy, emerging in the wake of the “liberalization" of the authoritarian regime.

ln its second part, the study is engaged in the examination of the specificity of these general processes - inadequacy of  financing mechanisms and, chief1y, their depletion during the recessive stage - in terms of governmental policies in the areas of housing, sanitary infra-structure, urban mass  transport, social security, medical and health care.

Some brief comments are finally presented on the prospects envisaged for the reordination of the social policy, in the framework of the New Republic's government.