Brazil is the fifth most populous country in the world with a large contingent of young people. In the year 2005, according to projections by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the country had a population of 184,184,264 made up of 50.8% female and 49.2% male. It is principally constituted by five ethic groups: Caucasians (55.2%); Mixed Race (38.2%); Blacks (6.O%);10 Asian (O.4%) and Native Indians (O.2%).
The South and Southeast regions have the largest population of Caucasians, while
North, Northeast, and Central West populations have a larger
concentration of Afro descendents and Native Indians.
The country is divided into five geographical regions (from
most populous to least): Southeast, Northeast, South, Central West and
North. Economic migration, both domestically and internationally, has
contributed to this demographic variation, with the Southeast attracting
over 14.9 million migrants of which more than 8.5 million
(approximately 55.5%) are from the Northeast. From the total amount
of domestic immigrants, 72.9% reside in the Southeast region (IBGE,
1999).
Economically, Brazil is considered a developing country while
at the same time it is considered the tenth largest economy of the world.
Through the 20th Century, it has benefited from an extensive
modernization program involving a range of development projects:
roads, highways, waterways and railroad constructions; implementation
of agricultural projects; construction of electric energy plants;
strengthening of commercial sectors; and expansion of technology,
communication and tourism.
At the same time, pressure from international financial institutions forced economic restructuring that
resulted in lower working standards, increased migration (including
illegal migration),11 territorial divisions, resurgence of traditional and
new forms of work exploitation, and the emergence of clandestine and
illegal markets involving organized crime.
In 1998, Brazilian per capita reached US$6,625.00, while the
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) reached US$ 775 billion. Although this
places the country as one of the richest in Latin America (which helps
account for the migration of labor into the country), it nonetheless
suffers the worst human development conditions within the sixteen
countries of the region, such as Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Venezuela
and Costa Rica.
In 1999, 15.1 million people (9% of the population)
lived on a dollar a day, with an additional 37 million (22%) below the
poverty line, living with an average monthly income of less than
R$60.00 (US$16.39), for a total of more than 50 million poverty
stricken individuals. The 40% poverty rate is distributed unequally
throughout the national territory. There are greater proportions of
poverty in the Northeast and North regions as compared to the South
and Southeast regions.
The situation worsened in the 1990s. Interest rates became the
highest in the world; the country debt increased 10 times leaving Brazil
one of the world's largest debtor nations.
From 1989 to 1998, the unemployment rate increased 3% to
9.5%. In absolute numbers, this means that in 1989, there were
approximately 2 million unemployed people in the country, while at the
end of the decade this group increased to more than 7 million. In
industrial and agricultural sectors, for instance, approximately 1.4
million jobs simply disappeared.
Because of this economic stress, in addition to the internal
migration discuss above, external migration increased as well. In 2001,
the Brazilian State Department discovered that there were
approximately 2 million Brazilians living abroad, mostly in the United
States (600,000), Paraguay (350,000) and Japan (300,000). Moreover,
the number of female migrants grew significantly. Illustrative of this,
in 1999, Spanish authorities deported 491 Brazilian citizens for
overstaying their legal visas. The majority were women working as
prostitutes.