The national social policies system in Brazil: Construction and Reform by Sônia Miriam Draibe (2023)
The consolidation of the Brazilian welfare state in the mid-1970s, under the aegis of an authoritarian regime, reinforced the conservative features that have characterized the system throughout its existence and that maintain an intimate relationship with the socioeconomic structure of low salaries, poverty, and social exclusion on which it is based. These conservative features are: the notion of social security supporting the system; protection, first for urban workers formally linked to the job market and then for segments of the corporately organized middle class, as opposed to basic social rights granted to all citizens; fragmented access, associated positively with systems of force, bargaining, and privileges, and negatively with low levels of universality and uniformity of social benefits; and high proportionality between benefits, on one side, and employment, wages, and past contributions, on the other; terms fostering low levels of redistribution.
