Asset-based welfare in Brazil

Abstract

The idea of asset-based welfare (ABW) has been widely discussed since the 1990s. This paper presents a policy developed in Brazil in the 1960s that could also be perceived as an ABW policy. The Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço (FGTS) is a compulsory savings scheme, managed by the state and financed through monthly deposits made by employers on behalf of their employees. The FGTS resembles a personalized public pension, but the balance of an individual FGTS account can also be used to facilitate access to homeownership. We do not argue that this is an inclusionary and redistributive policy, but we do argue that the FGTS acts as a facilitator of asset-building for those included in the formal labour market. Contrary to ABW practices in the Global North, in Brazil, the introduction of ABW policies represents the expansion rather than the retrenchment or readjustment of the welfare state.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 20 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.