📈 Human development for whom?

For the first time since the United Nations began keeping score, Brazil now belongs to the world's club of “very high human development” countries. The UN Development Programme's latest HDI report, released this week, puts the national index at 0.805 for 2024, up from 0.744 in 2012 — and past the 0.800 line that separates “high” from “very high.” 

It is the kind of round number governments print on banners, and ministers duly did — crediting the public health system, a decade of minimum-wage increases and the Bolsa Família cash-transfer program for longer lives, fuller classrooms and rising incomes.

But then comes the fine print…

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