Social protection in Brazil: what has changed in social assistance after the 1988 Constitution

This paper discusses the changes in the social assistance component of social protection in the two decades that followed the 1988 Constitution. It discusses the transformations of social protection and social assistance in the past decades and the processes that in the 1990s advanced the reform of social assistance policies in Brazil without, however, producing great changes in how services were delievered. By 2000 there had been a great expansion of resources as well as benefits and services coverage in social assistance. This paper argues that conditional cash transfer programs, though created and spread in an international context of restrictive policies, when integrated into Brazil's public and universal system of social assistance, substantively widened the scope of social protection. Some effects of the expansion in the Brazilian social protection system are identified: less income inequality; creation of an institutional capacity in the area of social assistance; the social, political and symbolic meaning of the inclusion of a large segment of the population in a public system of social assistance by means of a provision structure that does not belong to traditional devices of philanthropy and clientelism.