Anti-poverty Programmes in Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico

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While Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico have each tackled the poverty issue by increasing social spending, the types of programs and use of resources has had and will continue to have different effects for the future. Venezuela, relying on the revenue of high oil prices, has vastly increased social spending on building homes and clinics. Brazil has tackled education and health to address the issue of poverty, while Mexico has concentrated on stipends to poor families that is slated to be the most successful at tackling the actual causes of poverty. While in the short run these programs grant benefits to the poor, in the long run the failure to significantly address the causes of poverty can contribute to continued dissatisfaction with the quality of democracy.

Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela have spent more than $3.7 Billion in the last year on social and agricultural programs, building medical clinics and hundreds of thousands of homes for the poor. It has been able to accomplish this by solely relying on the booming oil wealth of the country. This ambitious effort to help the poor is an integral part in Chavez's "social revolution", yet critics says that this squandering of oil proceeds won’t do away poverty in the long run. The program is criticized for not tackling the causes of poverty and simply trying to spend the money in a visible way so as to gain loyalty and support. Also, the reliance on an unstable source has the potential to create devastating consequences should the source of wealth fail to bring in the revenue needed for continued support of the program. Rather, it has been suggested that the government should invest its earnings, as volume of production is falling, rather than simply spending it s...

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...erty and inequality successfully addresses two key concerns for Mexicans. It also has the effect of reducing crime and increasing education, overall benefits for the nation with a government that has successfully met the demands of the people.

So while all three countries have made advances in the issues of poverty in the short run, in reality it is Mexico's stipend program and Brazil's similar program that have the potential to truly improve the quality of democracy, while Venezuela's oil-financed programs are vulnerable to devastation and altogether failure of the program should the revenue of oil drop. All in all, addressing the issue of poverty at all does satisfy a key concern in government, yet whether it can maintain alleviating the problem of poverty depends on the nature of the program and whether the it can have stable allocation of funds and resources.

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