Rousseff Buoyed by Rising Poor as Brazil Rating Drop Looms
This article is for subscribers only.
Brazil’s once-richest man, Eike Batista, is watching his empire crumble. The 16 percent plunge in the Sao Paulo stock exchange in 2013 was second-worst in the world. Meanwhile, Luzia Souza is faring better than ever in the country’s poorest state.
The 29-year-old mother of two is one of 22 million people who have emerged from extreme poverty during President Dilma Rousseff’s three years in office, according to government figures. She moved from a shack regularly flooded by surging rivers and surrounded by open sewage to a house with running water on the outskirts of Teresina, the capital of Piaui in northeast Brazil, under a program financed by the government and the World Bank.