One of the fundamental underlying problems was that Brazil’s public finances were weak. The scale of emergency grant payments in 2020 had left the administration with a gigantic fiscal hole, increasing the size of the nominal deficit from 5.8 per cent of GDP at the end of 2019 to 13.7 per cent by the end of 2020. The decision to renew the grant in

Practically speaking, this outlook manifests in the substantial attention these countries pay to buttressing services pertaining to housing, the physical environment, conditions at work, supportive social environments, family allowances, income support, unemployment support, and other social services, rather than more medications, hospital days, an

Intensive care succeeds only when we hold the odds of doing harm low enough for the odds of doing good to prevail.

Those working in the informal economy, potentially most at risk from quarantines and lockdowns, benefited most. Farm labourers and domestic servants earned 60 per cent more from the auxílio than they had before coronavirus struck. But the broader macro-economic and social impact of the payment has been hugely significant. Overall 67.2 million peopl