Brazil Project

The rich and poor of Brazil

Brazil is seen as a developing country but not all of Brazil’s population live in slums.  A minority of Brazil’s population live in the cities in quite modern accommodation but this is on a small minority compare to the amount of people living in poverty across the country. Brazil generally has a poor standard of living resulting in a poor quality of life.

In particular I looked at  Sao Paulo one of the more economic parts of Brazil Sao Paulo is a large city, with quite a few of it’s residents well off with quite a high standard of living but nearly half of Sao Paulo’s population live in poverty with a low standard of living.

I compare two people’s lives both living in the city. This is my comparison.

There stories in brief

Maria lives with her parents and brother. Her father is a manager of a car factory and her mother works in an office. She goes to school full time with her brother and hopes to go on to higher education. She goes out into the city and has a social life, going to discos and restaurants. She has a maid and a nice house with a large garden.

Roberto lives with his parents and four sisters. He lives in a slum with only two rooms made out of any material they could find. His father makes and sells sandals at the local market; he makes the sandals out of old car tyres, his father earns around 80p on a good day. An open sewage system runs down the street which is dirty and spreads disease, this may have been a cause why two of his sisters nearly died of disease when babies.  He goes to school but only part time for half the day, his school seems to have little if no equipment although he will have to give up school altogether and work as a shoe shine boy full time/work.

My comparison

First of all we have to look at the first factor, who are they living with? Well Maria lives with just one brother; this may suggest that her parents had access to sexual protection or they may have been able to afford or had access to the service to have other unwanted unborn babies removed. Where as Roberto lives with four sisters meaning his parents had five children this may be the product of not having access to protection as Maria’s family might have. I also believe it would be less likely they would remove the child. They may have also had as many children as they did to help raise money for the family, more people in the family, more people out at work earning money. Although there is also the draw back of more mouths to feed. It is more common to have a larger number of family members in a poorer family.