For richer, for poorer

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Summary

Sao Paulo is Brazil's biggest city and the business hub of the country. Nested between the sky scrapers are the favelas or urban slums housing the poor. The favelas epitomize a stark fact that has ...

Sao Paulo is Brazil's biggest city and the business hub of the country. Nested between the sky scrapers are the favelas or urban slums housing the poor. The favelas epitomize a stark fact that has come to characterize the country today: the gulf between the rich and the poor in Brazil is one of the biggest in the world. Almost half the country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of just twenty thousand families--out of a population of 184 million. Today, President Lula da Silva's big project is to make a more equal society. In his election speech, he promised to improve education, to improve health, to make land ownership fairer and--most importantly--to fight poverty. But Brazil's business community believes rapid growth is what is needed to improve the country's economy and combat social inequality. Despite the gulf between rich and poor, extreme poverty is being reduced. In line with its Millennium Development Goal pledges, Brazil has halved the percentage of people living in extreme poverty.

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