Brazil's GDP per Capita Dropped 43% in Ten Years
Brazil's GDP per capita plunged 43% in 10 years, fueling a tight presidential race.
Two self-aggrandizing men getting into a war of words isn’t typically a news-worthy occurrence, except when the men in question are Brazilian political heavyweights Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The two traded insults in the first televised presidential debate on Sunday, ahead of Brazil’s presidential election on 2 October.
Former President Lula served 580 days in prison between 2018 and 2019 for several offenses uncovered in the continent-spanning Petrobras corruption scandal. But, the Brazilian Supreme Court annulled his corruption convictions last year, allowing him to run again. Lula has held a comfortable lead in the polls for the past few months. Still, it looks like his lead is narrowing, with online polling showing Lula with a 5 to 8-point advantage over Bolsanaro - a significant decrease from the ~17-point difference in February.
Those numbers will encourage Bolsonaro, who hopes that a slowly improving economy will help him close the remaining gap. Brazil is an ‘upper-middle-income country,’ but its economy has suffered significantly over the past decade: A downturn in commodity prices and dampened domestic demand severely affected the country’s GDP per capita, which declined 43% from $13,245 in 2011 to $7,518 in 2021.
As a result, the economy is a crucial topic for Brazilian electors, and right now, it is helping President Bolsonaro make his case for reelection. Unemployment is at a seven-year low, interest rate hikes have helped cool inflation, and consumer demand is recovering thanks to a multi-billion dollar social welfare program. But, most political analysts still aren’t predicting a Bolsonaro win — Inflation remains above 10%, the president’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic has not been forgotten, and many Brazilians remember a prosperous economy during Lula’s years in power.
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