According to a survey released this Tuesday (25th) by the Locomotiva Institute, families in class C, with a monthly income between R$5,200 and R$13,000, spend an average of 33.3% of their income on food.
Among class B families, with incomes between R$ 13,000 and R$ 26,000, the percentage drops to 13.2%. For families in classes D and E, with incomes between R$ 1.3 thousand and R$ 5.2 thousand, more than half of the money received monthly (50.7%) is destined to food. The survey was commissioned by the benefits company VR.
According to the study, for class C, benefits such as meal vouchers and food stamps represent, on average, between 3% and 8.5% of spending on food. For classes D and E, these benefits cover 33% of these expenses.
Class C, according to the survey, represents approximately 109 million people in Brazil, most of them black (60%). Almost half of these families are headed by women (49%) and 52% of this population did not complete high school. “Headed by women because part is a single mother”, details the president of the Locomotiva Institute, Renato Meirelles.
loss of purchasing power
In recent years, in a process aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic, Meirelles said that there was a loss of purchasing power for these families. “Five years ago, 40% of the value of a minimum wage was enough to buy a basic food basket. Today, 59% of the minimum wage is enough to buy a basic food basket. That is, the purchasing power of food, of basic items, has decreased, ”he explained.
In this layer of the population, strategies, as adopted by several brands, to reduce the size of packages or the quality of the composition of products as a way of disguising price increases tend, according to Meirelles, to be especially frowned upon. “Within what fits in his pocket, he will seek the best quality, this is the movement that is here to stay, that will not change”, adds the researcher.
indebtedness
According to the survey, eight out of ten families in the C class have outstanding debts, and one out of three is in default. According to Meirelles, debts are often contracted as a way of guaranteeing the consumption of basic items.
