RIO DE JANIERO, Brazil, April 16 (UPI) -- Some 58 million Brazilians are living in poverty on less than $1 a day, Brazilian news sources reported Friday.
According to a report by the Getulio Vargas Foundation titled "The Map of Hunger," one-third of Brazil's more than 175 million people are living well below the poverty line, earning an average of 79 reals (about $27) per month.
"The onus of the crisis is concentrated in metropolitan areas and their suburbs," said the report. Brazil's famous seaside city, Rio de Janeiro, is also home to the continent's largest "favela," or slum, while in its industrial capital, Sao Paulo, unemployment has reached nearly 20 percent.
Since assuming office in January 2003, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has talked a great deal about narrowing Brazil's enormous economic gap and ways to curtail poverty conditions like homelessness, unemployment and hunger.
However Lula's much talked about hunger eradication program Zero Fome (Zero hunger) has gotten off to a slow start and been plagued by administrative mismanagement. Brazil's economy, meanwhile, shrank by 0.2 percent in 2003 and joblessness rose to 12 percent nationwide.
